Every time you follow directions—assembling furniture, cooking pasta, searching for a song—you’re executing a process. In computer science, we make those processes explicit so a machine can follow them with no guesswork. That’s the heart of an algorithm.

Algorithms are the “thinking tools” behind apps, websites, GPS routes, and even spam filters. Learning to express a solution as a clear set of steps is the skill that turns problems into programs—regardless of the programming language you eventually use.