Programme operation and speed

Hello all.

I don't know if this is the correct forum, if not, can a moderator please move this thread.

As you can see from the title, I know nothing about programming and my only knowledge of anything to do with computers is using the Internet (mainly travel forums), but I hope you all take me seriously as I've had an idea for a website for over 5 years, and just lately I've thought of solutions to problems that prevented me moving my idea forward 5 years ago.

My area of expertise is travel and Itinerary planning (for 1 particular country), and for a long time I've dreamed of having a website that could think the way I do (I think most of us have had this dream), but my only knowledge of the way computers work is that they can only do what we instruct them to do, but on the plus side, if programmed well, they can do extremely complex tasks with speed and accuracy.

The website I plan is an Itinerary search website based SOLELY on information supplied by the user, amazingly, there isn't such a website for any country, though people tried this for New Zealand a few years ago, but when I tested the website it simply didn't work and like so many other tourism websites, it simply guided you to one of its 'set' Itineraries.

I think I've found a way to make the website work, though I'm very aware that hundreds of better qualified people have failed in their attempts.

But I need to know 2 things and I'd be grateful if any of you could either answer my questions, or point me in the right direction to find out for myself.

First, how exactly does a programme work? (at this stage some of you must be thinking that I'm somehow joking with you all, but I'm not)

For example, if a country had 26 tourist destinations named A - Z,

A is arrival point
B has a waterfall,
C has a beach,
D has a castle,
-
-
-
Z is departure point.

A programme starts at A and goes first to D (as user wants to visit a castle), can D be programmed to give instructions to the main programme depending on the user's initial requirements?

Or to put it another way, can D redirect the programme?

There's a very good reason I ask, and obviously I don't want to go into too many details, and the example above is a very simple example.

2nd question, how many 'options' can a programme consider per second?

The way I see the programme working, it would need to be able to consider millions of options within 2 or 3 seconds, though I've already thought of lots of 'filters' to lower the number of options.

I know it sounds crazy that someone with no knowledge of programming could think they have a solution to such a complex programming problem, but my solution is purely based on a computer doing what it's programmed to do, my idea is complex and would take a long time to programme, but I've thrown every Itinerary spanner into the works and have found solutions to all problems, I really believe in the idea.

Thank you for any help or advice.

Quick answer to both of your questions: yes and a lot of options. Millions of options within 2-3 seconds is fine if it is a well written program:

Programs are a set of instructions:

So if i code a module for destination D, then when it receives input, it also talks with the initial user info and generate a custom output - that is fine and doable.
The only aspect is, the more customization you require, more code will be required for each component.

For the second question, an ordinary CPU can process millions of instructions in a second. So when you say "we need to consider millions",

If consider translates into something like there are 1 ---- 10 million destinations
some body gives a criteria which can lead to say dest 322 and 7.5 million. Then this can be done through a good program with well written search logic.

However, if your "consideration " turns out to be a long operation i.e. not similar to a number or string comparison, then max elements that can be searched in 2-3 sec would depend upon that. But i doubt this would be the case for you.

Hope that helps.