Can Numera teach me to program?
If you are proficient with the Numera Expresssions Document, you will probably have a good understanding of the fundamental programming concepts and logic, i.e., storing data (arrays and structures), looping through data (for, while and do-while loops), variables etc. Numera has been used to teach beginning level programming.
It is important to understand fundamental concepts and logic because they are implemented in most of the 2500+ languages that have been designed. Once you understand the fundamentals it becomes easier to learn a new language. The challenge is to then code the fundamentals and logic in the new language's syntax.
Numera is similar to the numerical aspects of the C programming language, but greatly simplified. Learning C and C++ is not a trivial matter, and just knowing Numera will not make anyone a "real" programmer.
However, even an elementary understanding of the fundamentals can be very useful. For example, Microsoft Office, i.e., Excel, Access etc., provides the ability to write code "behind the application" with Visual Basic for Applications (VBA). If you understand the fundamentals of programming, then learning and writing VBA code will be easier than if you started from "scratch." Then, if you were proficient with VBA code for Excel, for example, you would really look smart at your work place.
You may ask, "Why have so many languages been developed?" The answer is they're often developed for specific kinds of programmers and/or disciplines. The original BASIC language (Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) was developed at Dartmouth College in 1964 as an easy introduction to programming. Microsoft's Visual Basic has grown into a feature rich mainstream language that far surpasses the original BASIC. FORTRAN was written for mathematical applications. Some languages are written for embedded applications, for example, a car's computer.