Ok so I was talking with a friend (non-programmer .. oh the segregation!), and simply put he asked 'what is programming?'

After racking my head for a bit, I somehow ended up saying something like, "Its sorta like writting instructions on a piece of paper for someone to read, except you give riddles with hints and steps on how its solved - you can either be fancy or straight to the point, and sometimes the fancier you are the more meanings you can get out with less effort." and, "You could also say its like a treasure hunt. For example the kids parents set up the maps, hide all the loot and write instructions out - where the kids follow the instructions to get the results" then finally ending it with "writing instructions to get results"

I went on a massive creative tangent I guess, I've never really been asked this question before! How would you guys approach this? My parents still ask what do I do with computers

Rather than explain I just show them. I usually just boot up code blocks and do some console input/output with some conditions and loops.

I think you had the right initial idea. Programming is very much like writing instructions on a piece of paper for someone to perform. But the person can only do what is written on the page, exactly as it's written with no assumptions. You tell the person you wrote the instructions for to begin his task, you watch the person try to perform the instructions as you wrote them, interrupt them when they seem to be doing something wrong, try to figure out where your instructions went wrong, make changes to what you wrote, and then tell the person to start over again. Repeat until you get the desired results.

Programming = problem solving/instructing a machine.

And yes showing is better than telling

Tell 'em it's like writing down a recipe that a 2 year old has to be able to follow. You have to explain really bizarre things that seem utterly ordinary to an older cook, and be ridiculously precise about everything.

A fun exercise is to have someone write down the instructions for tying their shoes - their target audience is a very young child that only knows how to read but knows nothing of strings and knots.

Tell him that the computer isn't a magic thinking machine, but is engineered and physically constructed to carry out a small set of instructions. Programming is taking those instructions and putting them together to make something useful. The instructions aren't complex, either. They are very basic operators like +, -, *, /, %, and memory controllers.

There's a game for that.


I was once asked this by an eye doctor and immediately mentioned problem solving, but that didn't go over too well. In the future, I would just say that programming is the practice of producing automatable processes by writing "scripts" (in theatrical parlance) that computers can follow.

hahah that looks hilarious!

I really like that Shoe tieing example to!

I'm not sure how showing will help, it'll just be like "whoa what just happened? how'd you do that?" followed by funny cat videos on Youtube

Every answer above is very good and precise.

But at some point you realize that computers have a sort of dark magic behind it and you can get pretty negative on your answer... like:
"Programming is about solving problems we created ourselves."

Though I prefer asking someone to solve the "How to make a popcorn" problem and explain to him/her how hard it is to tell the computer to solve some simple stuff.
You will probably laugh on how the person forgot to cover the pan, or how she forgot to put oil on it and so forth.

I just tell them it's magic, and move on to another topic.