Data Processing
Data processing is becoming a vast field of work in the office today. Business firms both large and small are using terminals to order merchandise, keep records of savings and checking accounts, input data of daily business transactions, plus a host of other operations.

Small business firms are finding it advantages to use microcomputers to do their payroll, accounts receivable and payable, general ledger, financial statements, inventory and other routine tasks.

Word Processing
The days of the typewriter are slowly slipping away. The typewriter of old is being replaced by word processing systems. Word processing programs are available for personal computers as well as stand-alone word processors that cost thousands of dollars. The word processing programs that are available for use on microcomputers are relatively inexpensive.

All word processing systems have similar usage and functions. They are all designed to speed up work in the office on the output of letters, memos, tables, and reports of various sorts. Routine form letters that are used in business are especially quick to reproduce on a word processor. All that is necessary is to input the data for each customer and print a personal letter to each one. Letters and legal documents that are built using various paragraphs can be quickly put together by having he paragraphs stored on the diskette and loading the paragraphs that pertain to the form which you are editing. Changes within reports or letters can be quickly done with the use of the work processor Find and Replace feature. In a matter of seconds, words can be changed throughout a document even if he document is several pages long. All of these conveniences mean an easier time for the operator to get out his/her work and increase in productivity for the employer.

The main difference in word processing systems is in the operating commands. All word processors do similar work; however, the commands to accomplish this work must be learned for each brand of equipment on the market. However, if the operator learns the basic ideas and functions of one word processing system, that operator can usually make an easy transition to another brand of word processor by learning the commands for the new machine.

Programming
Computers are made up of chips that are used as a memory bank to store information needed in order for the computer to do its work. The information that is put into the chips is called a computer program. A computer is not capable of doing anything unless it has a program in its memory. Computers are run on many languages. Some of these languages are: Basic, Fortran, Cobol, Pascal, Assembler, plus others. The person who writes the program must know the language of the computer on which he/she is working.

The programmer writes a list of logical statements, using the language of the computer, that tells the computer what it is to do. This list of statements must be loaded, the operator can make the computer do what that program was designed to do.

A programmer wrote the program on which you are working right now. You loaded the main program into this computer and now you are learning to use that program.