Programming vs coding | difference between programming and coding

Obviously, this article is going to be short. Today I want to answer a question, the question was put up in a random chat when I was doing with a student on Instagram and She asked me the question what is the difference between programming and coding?
Although these are very similar terms, very interchangeably used in almost any given context. But still, they do have some differences that I can point out.

It's almost like saying that I write my notes on a piece of paper and somebody is saying I write my notes on a page. Although we do understand that by a piece of paper and page, they really want to say the same thing and convey the same thought, that is true, and that is ok but still, they are interchangeably used. Similarly to that programming and coding is interchangeably used and we do use them but there is certain difference I actually can point out behind these things.

One of my main recommendations is not to go into too much of these things because they are very very exploratory you can explore them quite in-depth and ultimately you'll find eventually I am trying to get the answer to the questions like "What's the meaning of life/", "how I can evolve?" and all these things. So it's pretty easy to get lost in these thoughts but still, I would like to convey some other things about programming and Coding.

Explaining with Example

Before we go on finding programming and coding differences I would like to make a statement here, the statement is pretty clear and pretty obvious that almost - almost all people on this planet currently are getting interacted with some kind of programming and not just being interacted they are doing some kind of programming.

Suppose I have something in my hand now, Let this is a remote controller of my air conditioner. I'm pretty sure that you have also used some kind of air conditioner or maybe a TV remote or maybe a satellite connection of TV or phone or anything. I am sure almost every one of you has used some kind of remote, if you have, I said you have done the programming.

Let me explain that when I turn on my air conditioner I set it to a certain temperature let's just say 20 degrees. When the temperature reaches 20 degrees my air conditioner automatically gets turned off so it knows that when the temperature of the room is around 20 degrees I should not keep it ON, just making this temperature cooler I just want to stay there. That is some kind of programming I have set through this remote control that after 20° you can get shut down and I don't want any cooler on any hotter than 20 degrees. So I am programming through this remote control of my air conditioner to do a certain task and that basically the core concept of programming. Just providing some instruction for somebody to do some task when you wanted to be and how you want it to be done. That's exactly the programming is all about.

Another Example

Let's take another example if I pick up my world's most time-consuming device known as a mobile phone also. I picked up and I set an alarm at I want to get up at 6 o'clock in the morning and when I get up the next day I see that my mobile phone rings an alarm or a reminder that today at 6 o'clock and you might want to get up but what I do after that is totally my choice but still, I was able to program my phone in doing a certain task that I really wanted to do.

Programming is a very vague damn it doesn't really apply to just these devices & is all these things. Programming is not a world that was coined from the devices only, it was taken from regular day-to-day life. So you'll see that a lot in your life.

So now that you understand the concept of what programming actually is, what is the difference between programming and coding? Do you think this remote that I've put up a button and button just worked automatically? No probably not, there is some kind of code going on behind and code doesn't mean all the time that you have to write something in C, JAVA, or Python. No, it's not, sometimes it's different in the visual aspect sometimes it's just a memory switch, or sometimes just passing on different voltages or currents everything is just coding but the way we expect and how you think should be pretty clear.

Conclusion

So somebody has written a lot of gibberish code for setting up the temperature, turning it OFF and NO, and setting the timer as well. That's all is programming and that is also known as coding. But in some terms, if you want to really separate out two things I would say that all the tasks that you are assigning are programming and all the code that we write can be put under the umbrella of coding.

Bringing back to my statement when I said everybody is programming, yes everybody is setting up an alarm changing up their TV station, and channels, and setting off the air conditioner. These all the programming stuff that we are doing and all these controls that we were able to transfer to any person that holds the coding thing is all about.


Now one thing additionally I would like to put up is that coding is evolving and its keep on evolving all the time. It's not like the code that we used to Write, ten years ago we were writing the same and will be kept on writing that also just after 10 years after that. It's not. It's gonna be evolving quite a lot but one thing is for sure some kind of programming, some kind of coding is now in our human nature and it gonna stay forever.

Precisely we used to write the code to make some calculations as easy as we see right now, but was really difficult a time ago. Now we are on to a middle ground of the coding where things are getting more interesting and they have just gotten started here and eventually in the future it's not going anywhere. There is no chance that people will start doing this automation task they will never do it. Probably it will evolve to a different level, probably the code complexity that we have to write is gonna evolve to the next level but surely it's gonna can remain here, it's gonna just change its form.