Introduction to Programming CS201

2008

Abstract Code lacking comments, meaningful identifiers, and correct indentation is a nightmare. By studying 30 programs of various sizes to measure what percentage of their source code consisted of comments, meaningful identifiers, and whitespace, the author found that more than half of the code served developers rather than the compiler. The relative composition of the three elements was equally distributed and didn't appear to vary with project size.

Computers are tools for manipulating and analyzing information. Computer programs are the means for specifying what actions a computer performs. This chapter will look at a simple computer program. Some specific elements covered are: ✓ High-level computer languages ✓ Compiled vs. interpreted languages ✓ A simple C++ program ✓ Specifying variables ✓ Assignment and mathematical operations Programming Languages Computers are among the most complex artifacts made by humans and are comprised of billions of distinct elements. Direct control of such complexity is beyond our abilities. Instead, computer programming relies upon the principal of abstraction to allow us to specify what actions a computer should perform. Abstraction Abstraction is the pruning away of complexity resulting in a simplified mental model of a process. For example, the driver of a car is not required to understand the mechanics of a car engine in order to drive. As long as there is a mental model that the gas pedal makes the car go faster, the brake slows the car, and the steering wheel makes the car turn, a driver can be reasonably effective. Note that this mental model is not really correct – pressing the gas provides torque to the wheels, which may or may not accelerate the car. This example highlights one danger of abstraction; in unusual situations, the simplified model may provide incorrect predictions. For this reason, computer programming practitioners should have some understanding of how computers operate as well as detailed knowledge of the programming language.

In Proceedings IFIP World …, 1998

This paper reports on detailed observations during software enhancement tasks of five programmers enhancing software. The enhancement tasks represent realistic work behavior by industrial programmers. The paper describes the kinds of actions programmers preferred during ...

Proceedings of the International Academic Conference on the Future of Game Design and Technology, 2010

We present the conceptual design and first-phase implementation of an approach to computer programming instruction that has been designed to exploit the attractive force of video games. We partition the skills that a professional programmer must master into a sequence of eight levels, where each level introduces new programming tasks that are to be implemented on a progressively more detailed machine architecture. Our approach is intended to foster a conceptual understanding of the internal representation of data, and the underlying operations being performed on the data by an instruction sequence. To motivate the student programmer, our approach is designed to be integrated into a video game where, to progress through the levels of the game, the player must also progress through the levels of programming tasks. After completing all levels the player of such a game would have a thorough mastery of fundamental programming skills, including array indexing, recursion and pointer variables, coupled with a solid understanding of the underlying computational model and the von Neuman architecture.

SIGITE '05, 2005

Early in its history as an academic discipline, depth in computer programming was a primary distinguishing factor between IT and older computing disciplines, such as computer science. Initially, IT was perceived, or misperceived, as being "computing without the programming." However, as IT has begun to mature as a computing discipline, computer programming is emerging as "the" foundation skill for information technologists. However, programming in IT is fundamentally different from programming in computer science or software engineering, and the tasks and requisite skill sets of IT professionals differ from those of other computing professionals.

Dr Ahmad, 2017

Introduction to Programming Concepts with Case Studies in Python, 2012