An expansive area of the IT industry, computer-programming is also categorised as software-engineering or development. Computing devices have operated programs and applications ever since their first inception, & so programming is now very well developed. Virtually all electronic devices would be no more than 'dumb' boxes if they didn't incorporate software packages. Virtually every piece of technology in existence incorporates a program within it. Granted, a lot of it is what we refer to as 'firmware' or a simple operating system that allows the equipment to work; video recorders and DVD or Blu-ray Players are good examples. Visualize the navigation menu which pops-up when you are watching a DVD - that's software, and so is the on-screen interface that you use to set up a recording on your TV. When you click 'play' on your DVD or Blu-ray Recorder & settle down to watch a film, a piece of 'software' pulls the binary-code off the disc and transforms it into video information in no time at all.

There is an increasing trend to network based & internet based software now, as the world moves closer & closer towards the idea of Cloud computing. 'Cloud' computing refers to files that may be accessed from anywhere in the world, as they're stored out in the 'ether'. Everything - right down to the basic processing - is carried out in the cloud of computers. At some point the only real requirement will be that you should have a really basic terminal plugged in to the network (or obviously wirelessly connected to it).

Software engineering then, at it's lowest level, is just instructing an item of electronic equipment in a particular 'language' how to do it's job. However this is of course an incredibly 'dumbed down' way of explaining it. There are probably up to one hundred programs running in the background of your Windows desktop-computer. These are what in fact enable you to do anything since they sustain the whole system. There are in fact two separate types of programs used in computers. There's the operating system software, which is low-level, & the applications software. Windows from MS is most likely the operating-system the majority of us are familiar with. Windows is an extremely complicated suite of programs, all interacting jointly to control everything - the space on your desk-top, how you inter-act with it, your network & internet access, all the storage mediums and all the connecting devices.

A short while ago Microsoft upgraded their major qualification paths. They upgraded from their previous 'MCAD/MCSD' (Microsoft Certified Application/Solutions Developer) examinations to the 'MCTS' ('Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist') & the MCPD (Microsoft Certified Professional Developer) examinations. Generally, there are two 'MCTS' pre-requisite examinations before you move onto the complete 'MCPD' exam. If you are new to the industry & haven't written programs before, (even though the first module from Microsoft is labelled a foundation unit,) it would be a good idea to take a programming introductory course first. It's also generally a good idea to take a support qualification before both of them, so a decent idea of software-environments & software-support can be obtained. This will allow you to get into the industry doing support-work whilst you remain on your training. You should usually calculate for training to take a year to a year and a half if you are embarking on a full career-track and doing it part-time. The exact amount of training time is 600 hours to 700 hours given average circumstances.

'C' is one of the most commercially feasible languages for the student computer programmer to begin learning. It's not only really disciplined, its also the base point for many other more up to date programming languages. As a result when you've got the hang of 'C', getting to grips with other languages will be much easier. Microsoft support C very much - it's the main systems 'language', and is one of the major 'languages' in both Microsoft Visual-Studio & it's range of certifications. Considering such a broad scope of professional accreditation, and such visible promotion by Microsoft, any programming student would be fool-hardy to disregard the merits of mastering 'C'. In fact, C started life during the 1960's (it wasn't called C until the 1970's though.) In the 1980s, the changeover was made to object oriented C++ . This means the program can be several objects speaking to one another - not simply a single, linear pattern of activities. Microsoft announced their .NET enabled version of 'C' when we moved into the twenty first century. It has become referred to as C#, and is the edition we use now. Microsoft designed a software-framework allowing 'Windows' programmers access to an abundance of pre written libraries. It's this that the word '.net' refers to, and it helps to save programmers a great deal of time as so many of the elementary tasks are done for them.

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