Anyone who has used computers understand that computers need to be "programmed"—whatever that means. But to many people, computer programming sounds like an ability that is reserved for those with superhuman technical skills—like movie hackers or billionaire tech founders.

In reality, computer programming is just a fancy way of saying "telling a computer what to do." A computer program is then "the instructions telling a computer what to do."

As it turns out, computers are not the only thing that can be "programmed." If you've ever made a To-Do list, taught a dog how to sit, or written a how-to guide or recipe, you've already programmed before! Unlike a human or a dog, however, computers are very good at following instructions. And for some kinds of instructions, they can do them much faster.

Unfortunately, computers aren't as good at understanding language as humans or even dogs are. Therefore, in order to give them instructions, we need to use a programming language—a specific way of writing instructions (sometimes refered to as code) so that a computer can understand. There are hundreds of different programming languages, all with their own pros and cons. In this course, we will be using a language called Kotlin.

Below is some Kotlin code. Press the green Play button to see what it does!