An introduction to programming
The first question is, what is a program?
A program is text that you write using a programming language that contains behaviors that you need a processor to acquire. It basically creates a way of handling inputs and producing outputs according to these behaviors.
According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_programming):
Programming is the process of designing, writing, testing, debugging and maintaining the source code of computer programs.
Of course, this definition is very simple and it also applies to microcontrollers, as we already know that the latter are basically a type of computers.
Designing a program is the fact you have to think about first, before you begin coding it. It generally involves writing, drawing, and making schematics of all the actions you want your processor to make for you. Sometimes, it also implies to write what we call pseudocode. I hope you remember that this is what we created in the previous chapter when we wanted...