Testing MariaDB ColumnStore performance

MariaDB's ColumnStore is an engine that stores data in a columnar fashion. Although it shines in distributed architectures where you have a massive amount of data, you can see non-trivial performance improvements in single-instance architectures. This article shows how to:

• install ColumnStore using Docker in your development machine,
• create a simple Java web application to generate realistic test data,
• run test SQL queries to compare execution times of the ColumnStore vs InnoDB engines.

To follow this article, you need Java, a Java IDE, and Docker installed on your computer.

What is ColumnStore?

ColumnStore is a pluggable engine for MariaDB and MySQL. You can install it on top of an existing database instance. It is possible to have tables in the same database using multiple storage engines. For example, you can create a table called book for OLTP using the general-purpose InnoDB engine, and a table called book_analytics for OLTP using the column-oriented ColumnStore engine. Both tables can live in the same database schema and you can run queries that mix the two. Check these online resources to learn more about OLTP/OLAP and the different storage engines available in MariaDB:

• The place between transactions and analytics – and what it means for you
• Choosing the Right Storage Engine

Installing MariaDB and ColumnStore using Docker

Make sure you have Docker installed and running on your machine and use the following commands to download an image and create a container with CentOS, MariaDB and ColumnStore preconfigured:

docker pull mariadb/columnstore

docker run -d -p 3306:3306 --name mariadb_columnstore mariadb/columnstore

Configuring the database

If you want to configure the instance you can connect to the container using:

docker exec -it mariadb_columnstore bash

For example, you can edit the /etc/my.cnf file to increase the buffer pool size (this is an optional step):

[mysqld]

innodb_buffer_pool_size=1G

Remember to restart the container when you make this kind of change:

docker restart mariadb_columnstore

Connecting to the MariaDB instance

Use any SQL client that supports MariaDB to connect to the instance. For example, you can use IntelliJ IDEA's database view, or the command-line tool, mariadb. If you have MariaDB in your host machine, you already have the tool:

mariadb --protocol tcp -u user -p

Since a Docker container is not really a virtual machine, you connect to the database like if it was running natively on your matching, that is, the host is localhost.

Setting up the test user and tables

Create a new database user:

docker exec mariadb_columnstore mariadb -e "GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO 'user'@'%' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';"

Create a new database schema and two tables, one using the InnoDB engine and another using ColumnStore:

CREATE DATABASE book_demo;

USE DATABASE book_demo;

CREATE TABLE book

(

    id           int(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,

    title        varchar(255) DEFAULT NULL,

    author       varchar(255) DEFAULT NULL,

    publish_date date         DEFAULT NULL,

    pages        int(8)       DEFAULT NULL, 

    image_data   longtext     DEFAULT NULL,

    PRIMARY KEY (id)

) engine = InnoDB;

CREATE TABLE book_analytics

(

    id           int(11) NOT NULL,

    title        varchar(255) DEFAULT NULL,

    author       varchar(255) DEFAULT NULL,

    publish_date date         DEFAULT NULL,

    pages        int(8)       DEFAULT NULL

) engine = ColumnStore;

Generating test data using Java

Create a new project using the Spring Initializr and add the Spring Data JPA, MariaDB Driver, Lombok, and Vaadin dependencies. Also, add the following dependency to the pom.xml file:

<dependency>

    <groupId>com.vaadin</groupId>

    <artifactId>exampledata</artifactId>

    <version>4.0.0</version>

</dependency>

Configure the database connection in the application.properties file:

spring.datasource.url=jdbc:mariadb://localhost:3306/book_demo

spring.datasource.username=user

spring.datasource.password=password

Create a new JPA Entity class to encapsulate the test data and persist it in a table row:

package com.example;

import lombok.Data;

import lombok.EqualsAndHashCode;

import javax.persistence.*;

import java.time.LocalDate;

@Data

@EqualsAndHashCode(onlyExplicitlyIncluded = true)

@Entity

@Table(name = "book")

public class Book {

    @EqualsAndHashCode.Include

    @Id

    @GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.IDENTITY)

    private Integer id;

    private String title;

    private String author;

    private LocalDate publishDate;

    private Integer pages;

    @Lob

    private String imageData;

}

Create a new repository:

package com.example;

import org.springframework.data.jpa.repository.JpaRepository;

import org.springframework.stereotype.Repository;

@Repository

public interface BookRepository extends JpaRepository<Book, Integer> {

}

Create a service class with logic to generate realistic random test data in batches:

package com.example;

import com.vaadin.exampledata.ChanceIntegerType;

import com.vaadin.exampledata.DataType;

import com.vaadin.exampledata.ExampleDataGenerator;

import lombok.RequiredArgsConstructor;

import lombok.extern.log4j.Log4j2;

import org.springframework.stereotype.Service;

import java.time.LocalDateTime;

import java.util.List;

import java.util.Random;

@Service

@RequiredArgsConstructor

@Log4j2

public class GeneratorService {

    private final BookRepository repository;

    public void generate(int batchSize, int batches) {

        var generator = new ExampleDataGenerator<>(Book.class, LocalDateTime.now());

        generator.setData(Book::setTitle, DataType.BOOK_TITLE);

        generator.setData(Book::setAuthor, DataType.FULL_NAME);

        generator.setData(Book::setPublishDate, DataType.DATE_LAST_10_YEARS);

        generator.setData(Book::setPages, new ChanceIntegerType("integer", "{min: 20, max: 1000}"));

        generator.setData(Book::setImageData, DataType.BOOK_IMAGE_URL);

        for (int batchNumber = 1; batchNumber <= batches; batchNumber++) {

            List<Book> books = generator.create(batchSize, new Random().nextInt());

            repository.saveAllAndFlush(books);

            log.info("Batch " + batchNumber + " completed.");

        }

    }

}

Create a web UI:

package com.example;

import com.vaadin.flow.component.button.Button;

import com.vaadin.flow.component.html.H1;

import com.vaadin.flow.component.notification.Notification;

import com.vaadin.flow.component.orderedlayout.VerticalLayout;

import com.vaadin.flow.component.textfield.IntegerField;

import com.vaadin.flow.router.PageTitle;

import com.vaadin.flow.router.Route;

import lombok.extern.log4j.Log4j2;

@Route("")

@PageTitle("Data generator")

@Log4j2

public class GeneratorView extends VerticalLayout {

    public GeneratorView(GeneratorService service) {

        var batchSize = new IntegerField("Batch size");

        var batches = new IntegerField("Batches");

        Button start = new Button("Start");

        start.addClickListener(event -> {

            service.generate(batchSize.getValue(), batches.getValue());

            Notification.show("Data generated.");

        });

        add(new H1("Data generator"), batchSize, batches, start);

    }

}

Running the generator web application

The project includes an Application class with a standard Java entry point method. Run this application as you would with any other Java application using your IDE or the command line with Maven (make sure to use the name of the JAR file that your project generated):

mvn package

java -jar target/test-data-generator-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT.jar

The first build and run of the application take time, but further builds and runs will be faster. You can invoke the application in the browser at http://localhost:8080:

I generated 100 batches of 10000 rows each for a million rows in the database. This takes some time. Check the log if you want to see the progress.

Challenge: Try using the ProgressBar class, the @Push annotation, and the UI.access(Command) to show the progress in the browser.

Running a simple ETL process for analytics

To populate the book_analytics table, we can execute a simple SQL INSERT statement that serves as an Extract, Transform, Load (ETL) process. In concrete, the image_data column stores the image potentially used in a web application that shows the cover of a book. We don't need this data for OLAP, which is the reason we didn't include the image_data column in the book_analytics table. Populate the data with the following SQL statement:

INSERT INTO book_analytics(id, author, pages, publish_date, title)

    SELECT id, author, pages, publish_date, title FROM book;

The process should take only a few seconds for a million rows.

Comparing the performance of analytical queries

Below are some examples of queries that you can use to compare the performance of the ColumnStore engine vs InnoDB. I used an empiric approach and run each query several times (5 to 10 times) taking the fastest run for each. Here are the results:

SELECT COUNT(id) FROM book; -- 251 ms

SELECT COUNT(id) FROM book_analytics; -- 111 ms

SELECT publish_date, SUM(pages) FROM book GROUP BY publish_date; -- 767 ms

SELECT publish_date, SUM(pages) FROM book_analytics GROUP BY publish_date; -- 206 ms

SELECT author, COUNT(id) FROM book GROUP BY author HAVING COUNT(id) > 5; -- 20 s 218 ms

SELECT author, COUNT(id) FROM book_analytics GROUP BY author HAVING COUNT(id) > 5; -- 1 s 93 ms

The biggest difference is in the last query. 20 seconds vs 2 seconds approximately. All the queries show a non-trivial advantage in favor of ColumnStore.

Take into account that for other kinds of database operations, ColumnStore could be slower than InnoDB. For example, queries that read several columns without aggregate functions involved. Always make informed decisions and experiment with queries before deciding on InnoDB, ColumnStore, or other engines for your database tables.

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Using Vaadin web components in HTML documents without frameworks

Vaadin is a development platform for building web applications in Java. Although it includes a Java API (Vaadin Flow) that you can use to implement the User Interface (UI) entirely in Java without writing any HTML or JavaScript, the UI components included in Vaadin can be directly and individually used in any HTML document without having to use Vaadin Flow, Vaadin Fusion, or any other web framework.

Vaadin UI components are implemented as Web Components. In short, a Web Component is a custom HTML tag or element that a developer can define. For example, on YouTube, you can see that the developers created a custom element called ytd-comment-action-buttons-rendered to encapsulate the action buttons associated with a comment:

Vaadin has a collection of modern Web Components, and in this article, you'll learn how to use them with the help of two tools: npm and Parcel. npm is needed to manage the dependencies. An example of a dependency is the Vaadin button Web Component (vaadin-button). This Web Component is implemented in a set of files that you need to download from somewhere. npm helps with that. Parcel is a zero-configuration JavaScript module bundler. It takes all the JavaScript files that make up your application plus the dependencies and creates a single JavaScript file that you can publish with your application when you deploy it to production.

Create a new project

Create a new directory for your application. For example:

> mkdir vaadin-components-without-frameworks

Download Node.js. You need it in since it contains npm. Install it and initialize a new project as follows:

> cd vaadin-components-without-frameworks
> npm init -y

This creates a package.json file in the current directory. This file contains, among other things, the dependencies that your application needs.

Create a new JavaScript file with the name index.js. Create a new HTML file that loads the index.js file. Use index.html as the name of the file and create a simple document as follows:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
    <title>Vaadin Web Components in HTML</title>
    <script src="index.js"></script>
</head>
<body>
    <h1>Using Vaadin Web Components without frameworks</h1>
</body>
</html>

Add Vaadin Web Components

Let's use Vaadin's button Web Component in this example. Download it using npm as follows:

> npm i @vaadin/vaadin-button --save

This creates a new node_modules/ directory where all the dependencies will reside. There, you'll find the files that form Vaadin's button Web Component and its dependencies. Web Components can have dependencies themselves.

Import the Vaadin's button dependency in the index.js file as follows:

import '@vaadin/vaadin-button/vaadin-button.js';

Using Vaadin Web Components

With the dependencies in place, add a Vaadin button in the index.html file as follows:

...
<body>
    <h1>Using Vaadin Web Components without frameworks</h1>
    <vaadin-button onclick='alert("It works!")'>Click me</vaadin-button>
</body>
...

Building and running the application

Download Parcel by running the following:

> npm install -g parcel-bundler 

To build the application, invoke Parcel as follows:

> parcel index.html

This creates the client-side bundle and the distribution files in the dist/ directory. These are the files that you can deploy to a web server in development, testing, or production environments. In fact, when you run the previous command, Parcel starts a development server. You can invoke the application at http://localhost:1234. Here's a screenshot:

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New book - Practical Vaadin: Developing Web Applications in Java

I'm glad to announce the availability of my most recent book, Practical Vaadin: Developing Web Applications in Java published by Apress, a division of Springer Nature.

The book teaches you how to develop Java web applications from scratch using the Vaadin open-source framework. You don't need to have any experience in web development to follow this book. On the contrary, the book starts by explaining the key technologies in web development and how Java fits into the picture. You'll learn how web servers operate, what a client/server architecture is, and how Servlets are the foundation of Java web development.

With a solid knowledge base established, you'll dig into web Graphical User Interface (GUI) creation using the Java Programming Language. The book shows how to add buttons, text fields, combo boxes, data grids, and how to connect the values in input fields to Java domain classes using data binding. You'll learn advanced topics such as authentication and authorization (login view and permissions), Server Push to update the UI from threads running on the server, the Vaadin's Element API to gain low-level access to the Document Object Model (DOM) in the browser, responsive design to automatically adapt the UI to different screen sizes, and much more.

The book also covers client-side UI implementation using Vaadin Fusion, a feature of Vaadin that allows you to implement views using the TypeScript programming language. It also covers integration with Spring Boot and Jakarta EE, alongside introductions to the basic concepts in these two technologies. The examples show how to efficiently connect to SQL databases using connection pools, and how to consume the data using the popular Jakarta Persistence API (JPA).

The book is available in print and digital formats on Amazon and many, many online bookstores. Here are some links:

• Apress: https://www.apress.com/gp/book/9781484271780
• Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1484271785
• Barnes&Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/practical-vaadin-alejandro-duarte/1139562555
• Book Depository: https://www.bookdepository.com/Practical-Vaadin-Alejandro-Duarte/9781484271780
• Alibris: https://www.alibris.com/Practical-Vaadin-Developing-Web-Applications-in-Java-Alejandro-Duarte/book/50286896
• Booktopia: https://www.booktopia.com.au/practical-vaadin-alejandro-duarte/book/9781484271780.html
• thriftbooks: https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/practical-vaadin-developing-web-applications-in-java_alejandro-duarte/28817904
• Books-a-million: https://www.booksamillion.com/p/Practical-Vaadin/Alejandro-Duarte/9781484271780
• BetterWorldBooks: https://www.betterworldbooks.com/product/detail/Practical-Vaadin--Developing-Web-Applications-in-Java-9781484271780
• AbeBooks.co.uk: https://www.abebooks.co.uk/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=30977810544
• Powell's: https://www.powells.com/book/practical-vaadin-9781484271780
• Strand Book Store: https://www.strandbooks.com/product/9781484271780
• Adlibris: https://www.adlibris.com/fi/kirja/practical-vaadin-9781484271780

I truly hope this book helps those starting their careers in web application development with Java, and those avid to learn more or refresh their knowledge on the powerful Vaadin Java web framework.

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Designing an open-source Community Award

I had the pleasure to announce the Vaadin Community Award during Vaadin Dev Day Spring 2021. This award is a way to recognize members of the Vaadin Community who actively participate and help others through forums, social media, events, code, and more. The Vaadin Community has been growing rapidly over the past years and more and more individuals have become extremely active online and in conferences. In the Community Team at Vaadin, we figured it only makes sense to officially reward those who constantly help developers and decided to create that Vaadin Community Award (VCA).

I lead the effort by looking into other similar programs in the software industry. Companies such as Google, Oracle, Red Hat, Microsoft, and others have multiple programs to recognize the efforts of their community members. From ways to select the winners and promote the program to the program's name, we quickly made adjustments from the initial idea using the findings from others. For example, initially, we proposed the name Most Valuable Professional. However, the acronym didn't play well for a company that produces web frameworks—MVP is easily understood as Model View Presenter by web developers, or even worst, as Minimum Viable Product! From there, we proposed alternatives and selected the name Vaadin Community Award.

A brief description of what the program intends to achieve is always useful. So I wrote one that describes the essence of the program:

The Vaadin Community Award (VCA) is a program that recognizes community members with an exceptional track record on community participation. The VCA is given to members that actively lead online and local Vaadin communities, speak at conferences or Java User Groups, create and maintain Vaadin Directory add-ons, publish articles and videos, engage in social media, Discord, and Stack Overflow discussions, and in general, passionately help other members of the community.

This helps the team and the community understand what the program is about concretely. It helps to give examples of things that community members should do to win the award. I left the benefits out since this is better explained with bullet points, and it shouldn't be (and it usually is not) the main motivator for members to be actively engaged in the community. Often, the driving factor is to get recognition and experience to show that they are proficient or have the passion for working on technical projects or communities around open-source software.

Coming up with a set of benefits is important nevertheless. From officially receiving the recognition to getting tangible prizes, a good set of benefits have the potential to keep the winners engaged in the community and inspire others to join the selected group. At first, the idea was to give a certificate that the winners can download plus extra powers in the Vaadin Discord server (chat). This combination works well as it officially recognizes the title and gives more tools to the winner to continue to help the community. We later added a physical recognition token that we would send to the winners, like a trophy that they can put in their homes to remind them how valuable they are to the Vaadin Community. We also decided to create a web page with information about the program and a list of winners to boost the recognition part. I proposed to give them a one-year subscription to the Pro offer of Vaadin for free—if someone has been helping the community to the point of earning this award, they should definitively have all the tools Vaadin develops in their belt. And to complete the package, we added the possibility to be interviewed for the Community Spotlight series.

Another aspect to consider when designing a community award is how to select the winners. Who nominates members, and who picks the winners? How many of them and for how long do they retain the title? For the VCA program, we decided that previous winners should nominate new candidates and the whole community select the winners through voting. By doing this, Vaadin yields control of the program to the community. We initially decided to give the award for a period of one year, allowing winners to be nominated and win the award in subsequent years. The goal was to encourage previous winners to continue to work for the community. However, if previous winners are the ones nominating new ones, this wouldn't make much sense, so we discarded the idea. When the program starts, there are no winners yet, so we decided to select the initial ones internally at Vaadin to get a good starting team.

In summary, come up with a good name and description, select a good set of benefits, and come up with a good way to select the winners avoiding situations like "you have to do this specific thing to win." Let the community participate in the process as much as possible.

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How to participate in and contribute to open source projects

I like to think about open-source involvement in terms of levels. Although no level is more important than the other, they build up on top of each other and take you through a good path to become a key member of an open-source community. In short, the levels are:

1. Observer
2. Member
3. Contributor
4. Committer
5. Maintainer

Become a user of the product

The best way to get inspired and start contributing to an open-source project is by using it. It's a natural first step. You'll learn about the vocabulary around the product, its strengths, and its weaknesses from a user perspective. Your interest in improving the product will increase alongside your motivation to contribute back to the community.

This level makes you an observer.

Join the community

Once you become a regular user of the software, you'll feel comfortable using the software and talking about it. You'll learn where to find help and how others use the software. You'll visit community forums and start asking questions. Eventually, you'll also answer questions. You are participating in the open-source community at this point. Forums are not the only way to participate in the community. You can present the software to others, talk about it, and promote it with your peers. The critical part here is that you interact with others who are or might be interested in the software.

This level makes you a community member.

Report bugs, issues, and improvements

Once you become a regular user, you can start reporting defects (bugs, issues) to the maintainers. Open-source projects typically have online tools for this. For example, if the project is hosted on GitHub, you'll most likely find an issues tab. Be considerate, and check if the bug has already been reported. If that's the case, see if you have new information useful to the maintainers. If not, open a new case and provide valuable information on the issue. If they have any, follow the guidelines of the project to report issues. Make sure you use formatting tools (especially for logs or source code when applicable) and attach relevant screenshots if they are relevant. Suggest improvements on issues but also as new ideas.

This level makes you a contributor.

Send source code contributions

If you are a software developer, this is the level you are most interested in. Your path towards contributing code can start with simple patches, add-ons, or documentation. They are frequently managed in the same way—through source code version control systems such as Git. Look for contribution guides in the project website, download the source code, and set up a development environment. Some projects are massive in terms of the number of lines of code, so be prepared to spend some time getting familiar with the big picture and focus on building and running the project. I guarantee you that seeing the software running from your very own built is a highly satisfying and motivating experience. Experiment by changing the code and seeing the results. Jump to the project's bug tracker and see if there are any easy-to-tackle bugs you could hunt. Often, maintainers mark a bug as a "good first issue" when they estimate that the effort required to fix it is low. Always go through the contribution guidelines for committers and stick to the processes that the project has established for good collaboration.

This level makes you a committer.

Become a key member of the project

As you contribute more and more to the project, you'll find that other community members start to recognize and trust your work. You have demonstrated your skills and passion for the project, and people trust your ability to make good decisions to help the project succeed. In many open-source projects, maintainers can nominate or even directly select community members to become permanent contributors to the source code. You'll start reviewing other's patches and, likely, implementing new features and help drive the future of the project. Only genuine interest and constant work in the project will take you there. The road can be long, but I promise, it's an exciting one at each of the levels I describe here.

This level makes you a maintainer.

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Blog rebrand

Hey reader! A short entry to announce and document my blog's rebrand. These are the main changes: 

• Renamed to Programming Brain (previously Programmer Thoughts)
• New www.programmingbrain.com domain (previously www.alejandrudu.com)
• New cooler theme

It's been a while since I wrote for my blog. I had been busy publishing mostly on vaadin.com and dzone.com, but I do want to keep this one alive and this rebrand is proof of my motivation. I wanted to move the focus to the content rather than the author's profile. So, I found a Blogger theme that fits this purpose well. It doesn't show lateral menus all full of me, me, and me. Instead, most of the space is organized around the articles without distracting images and with the important information highlighted. At the bottom of the pages, you can always find a footer with more information about the website.

From now on, I'll try to share useful information around programming, software development, Java and its ecosystem, Vaadin, databases, and other technical topics. I also want to share thoughts on Developer Relations (or Developer Advocacy) and open-source community management. You can always send suggestions on topics that you would like me to discuss as well. I'd love to hear from you!

Big thanks to Sandpatrol for the design, NewBloggerThemes.com for the theme, and Blogger for the hosting.

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How to start a career in coding

A couple of days ago, a good friend of mine asked me how to make her kid more interested in programming. I think that parents should focus on giving kids opportunities to try different things instead of pushing them to take a route. Success is guided by motivation, and motivation comes from the inside. The best programmers I know started and continued their careers because they enjoyed the craftmanship of coding. They were attracted to the cryptic look of a screen full of code. They liked the tactile nature of typing code on a keyboard. They were amazed by how a series of words in English mixed with special characters lead the computer to show something on the screen. They quickly grasp the idea of a series of steps typed in a text file and how the computer understands these steps and executes them. They early discovered that the computer is, in the end, a dumb machine that obeys the programmer. None of them told me something like, "I started to program computers because I knew I would have a job in the future." No. The motivation is in the craftsmanship.

Like with many other disciplines, you can try programming and see if you like it. I started when I was about 13 years old. Since it seemed my brothers and I liked computers and we had gotten our first one, my parents bought a series of books on computers for kids. The third book was about programming. The programming language that the book explained was BASIC, a general-purpose language with an easy-to-read syntax. I don't think you need to be a kid or a teenager to start a career in software development. All you need is to experience coding by yourself and be honest with your feelings. If you enjoy the process, you'll get trapped in it and your curiosity will guide you.

So, let me show you how you can try coding by using the BASIC programming language. Unlike in my days of learning how to program, you don't need to install anything (lucky you!). Head to https://www.jdoodle.com/execute-freebasic-online and follow the rest of this article. This won't work if you don't go and open that page, preferably, from a computer (as opposed to a mobile device).

What you see on the website I pointed you to, is a screen divided into several sections. On the top, you have a text editor where you'll be typing your code shortly. At first, you'll find a short program already typed for you. Remove all that. Select the text and hit the delete key on your keyboard. We want to start coding from scratch! Next, you'll see a section to configure things out. I want you to make sure that you turn the "interactive mode" on by clicking on the switch that says Interactive. The switch should be turned to the right. Next, you'll see the area where the result or output of the program is displayed.

A programming language consists of words. Very few words actually, especially when compared to a human language. We are going to use upper-case for those words that are part of the BASIC programming language. For the rest, we'll use lower case. Let's get started! Type the following on the code editor at the top of the page:

PRINT "This is my first program ever!"

Click on the Execute button. You'll see the text "This is my first program ever!" on the output. Try adding another line of code to make the program show the message "I'm coding!" in the output.

PRINT "This is my first program ever!"

PRINT "I'm coding!"

Remember to click on the Execute button every time you want to see the result of your program. You'll see that the output shows the texts in the order in which you typed them in the code editor. Try switching the lines of code:

PRINT "I'm coding!"

PRINT "This is my first program ever!"

Once again, the output shows the messages in the same order as your instructions. The computer executes each line at a time from top to bottom. Let's try an essential concept in programming—variables. A variable is a space where you can store a value like a number, for example. A variable has a name and you are free to use any name as long as you don't use a reserved word like PRINT and others. Define a variable to hold a number by inserting a line of code at the very beginning of the program:

DIM n1 AS INTEGER = 7

PRINT "I'm coding!"

PRINT "This is my first program ever!"

The line you added tells the computer to create a variable with the name n1 and store the value 7 in it. The variable is ready, so you can make the program tell its value:

DIM n1 AS INTEGER = 7

PRINT "I'm coding!"

PRINT "This is my first program ever!"

PRINT n1

When you run (another term for "execute") the program, you'll see the number 7 in the output. Imagine that the variable n1 is the computer's favorite number, so you want the computer say "I like the number 7". You can just use PRINT "I like the number 7" but that's boring. Instead, let's use the value in the variable n1. To do that, you need to add the value at the end of the text "I like the number ". To do that you can use the ampersand character (&):

DIM n1 AS INTEGER = 7

PRINT "I'm coding!"

PRINT "This is my first program ever!"

PRINT "I like the number " & n1

Run the program and see how the computer tells you the number it was programmed to like. Change the value of the n1 variable, and rerun the program. For example:

DIM n1 AS INTEGER = 4

PRINT "I'm coding!"

PRINT "This is my first program ever!"

PRINT "I like the number " & n1

A cool thing about variables is that they can store values you can type when running the program. For example, let's make the program ask you what number you like. For that, you can use the INPUT keyword of the BASIC language. We need three new lines. One for telling the computer that we need another variable (to store your answer), one to ask the question, one to get the input from the keyboard. Add them at the end as follows:

DIM n1 AS INTEGER = 4

PRINT "I'm coding!"

PRINT "This is my first program ever!"

PRINT "I like the number " & n1

DIM n2 AS INTEGER

PRINT "What number do you like?"

INPUT n2

Run the program and answer the question! Type a number and hit ENTER. The instruction INPUT n2 tells the computer to pause the execution of the program until the user (that's you as well since you are the programmer and the user of your own program!) types a number and hits the ENTER key. The value that the user types is stored in the n2 variable. Now you can use the value to show another message to the user:

DIM n1 AS INTEGER = 4

PRINT "I'm coding!"

PRINT "This is my first program ever!"

PRINT "I like the number " & n1

DIM n2 AS INTEGER

PRINT "What number do you like?"

INPUT n2

PRINT "Cool, I also like " & n2

A powerful thing computers can do is compare things and execute code if a condition is fulfilled. For example, let's say you want the program to show a message if the number that the user introduces is greater than 999. You can do that by using the IF and THEN keywords:

DIM n1 AS INTEGER = 4

PRINT "I'm coding!"

PRINT "This is my first program ever!"

PRINT "I like the number " & n1

DIM n2 AS INTEGER

PRINT "What number do you like?"

INPUT n2

PRINT "Cool, I also like " & n2

IF n2 > 999 THEN PRINT "It's a big number!"

The last line checks whether the value stored in the n2 variable is greater than 999 and shows a text in the output if so. Otherwise, the program won't show the message. Run the program and introduce a number like 1000. Try also entering a small number and see the different behavior of the program. You are making your program look smarter and smarter!

I'm going to leave it there for now. Did you enjoy the experience? Was it fun to type code, click the Execute button, and interact with your own program? This is the essence of what a programmer does, and if you had fun and cannot wait to type more code, you are on the route to becoming a programmer! If you found it tedious or hard to understand, it might have been my teaching methodology that doesn't suit your learning style. Try other resources, like videos or books, and reevaluate your experience.

There are many programming languages. It doesn't matter which programming language you want to learn. You can continue your journey with BASIC or jump to a language such as Java, Python, C++, or any other that you find interesting for whatever reason. I recommend you get a book on the language you pick and read it through. Code small programs to understand the concepts or if you have a fun or funny idea, go ahead and code it!

Once you feel comfortable with a programming language, explore the libraries that are available for it. A library is code that someone else has written to fulfill a particular function. A library can include code for making it easier to render graphics or images, store data in files, show input controls like text fields and buttons, run complex financial calculations... The list goes on and on.

At some point, you'll have to learn concepts such as data structures and algorithms. Make sure to study the basics of these two topics as well. Read about software engineering. Learn about unit testing and source code control systems such as Git. But don't worry about these things when you are starting. Bookmark this article and come back as you progress. I really hope you continue your journey and, most importantly, that you enjoy it! If someday you get a job as a coder, let me know! I'd love to hear your story.

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