What comes after “Hello, World”?
It’s been there for who knows how long, a tradition among programmers and coders, more like a rite of passage. It’s believed that when you’re using a new language, or want to test out a new language and are writing your first code, you could never go wrong with “hello, world”.
Here’s a quick example of what a “Hello, World” program looks like in python;
print("Hello,world")But, what happens after your “Hello, World” program? Have you suddenly become a programmer? Hacker? Coder? Software developer?
Well, The hello world program is just meant to help you get familiar with the language. So, where do you go from here?
In order to fully harness the power of a language and avoid going back to tutorials as much as possible, we recommend taking a course or reading a book on Data Structures and Algorithms (DSA) on the language.
So, what are Algorithms?
An Algorithm is a precise set of steps for achieving specific results, kind of like a recipe. Algorithms are there to help you solve problems without reinventing the wheel or having to think too much, you just follow a set of steps that helped someone else overcome the same problem you’re facing. Picture yourself trying to bake a carrot cake. Now, you’ve never done it before, right? But you found this recipe on the internet and found something like this recipe I got from https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/17393/best-carrot-cake-ever/
What are Data Structures?
According to www.techtarget.com, “A data structure is a specialized format for organizing, processing, retrieving and storing data”. In layman’s terms, it simply means a data structure is a way to easily organize and manage your data. Data structures are employed in the instance where traditional “data types” (such as; integer(1, 2, 3, 4, …), floating point(1.1, 1.2, …), etc) are not enough to represent your data.
How are data structures used?
- Storing data — They’re used for specifying data types that belong in certain places in a project. For example, data structures are the reason you can’t place an image in an entry box meant for text on a website, and vice versa.
- Managing resources and services— basically, data structures are used for making connections between different data banks/locations. Like when you click a shortcut on your desktop and it leads you to a folder on your computer. This is powered by data structures.
- Data exchange — data structures facilitate the exchange of data between applications, like the connection between your browser and a web server. Data structures are the reason you can get your files and web pages in an organized manner.
- Indexing and searching — Data structured, paired with certain algorithms are there to help you keep your data organized and easy to locate.
Data structures can be:
- linear or non-linear — they can be arranged like 1,2,3 or a,b,c, or in the form of a graph
- Homogeneous or heterogeneous — whether all items in a given repository are of the same type, for example a list that has both names and numbers in no particular order. Or
- Static or Dynamic — where data can be of a fixed size and volume or not.
We shall take it from here on the next episode of this series. Thanks for your time.
