Why is programming important?

There are many reasons for why programming is becoming increasingly popular. The result of doing programming allows people to connect through social media, such as Facebook and Instagram; it allows people to be entertained through immersive and rich games; and it allows people to learn and become educated in a fun and engaging manner using interactive applications. Programming has enabled us to share knowledge across geographical boundaries in a way that seemed impossible before programming existed. Programming has helped us automate tasks such as selling tickets at the local train station, paying in a faster and secure way using our smartphone, and programming has helped us measure the well-being of humans in order to give the right treatment at the right moment.

Programming has made it possible for us to instruct a computer on how to perform certain tasks in a more efficient and reliable manner than would ever be possible for a human being. There are natural limits to how much a person can do within the 24 hours of a day or within the lifetime of a person's life. Also, it is costly to have a person perform tedious tasks that seem repetitive, time-consuming, or based on deterministic behavior, such as calculations. As it is costly and it can be hard to find the right or, simply, enough people, it also means that it does not scale very well. Computers are relatively cheap and can be considered as fairly stable. If computers break, they are easy to replace, which means that performing tasks using computers scales really well. Just imagine a bank system without computers; imagine people sitting and keeping track of each person's balance and trying to keep it synchronized across large geographical distances.

Imagine the recent Pokémon smartphone game being done without computers. With no computers, there would need to be maps distributed to each player that show exactly where a Pokémon is located and people (from the game) would need to be at the actual geographical location in order to tell or validate that the Pokémon trainer had just found a Pokémon. Also, in order to keep track of Pokémon caught, and not to mention the outcome of a battle with another trainer, a lot needs to be handled on paper by the player. Without computers, one can easily think of problems with consistent play experiences, such as verifying that a player does not cheat and modifying the game rules as the game evolves, just to name a few. In general, computers have the ability to enhance our daily life, and we quickly forget what the world would look like without computers. Traditionally, programming has had a steep learning curve and, in general, been inaccessible by younger people. Today, programming is widely used and we have many different languages and tools that solve a lot of different types of problems. This means that it has been possible to lower the learning curve and involve people of different ages and with different capabilities.