Fundamentals of Programming
Lecture 1
Chamila Karunatilake
D e p a r t m e n t o f I n f o r m a t i o n a n d C o m m u n i c a t i o n Te c h n o l o g y
F a c u l t y o f Te c h n o l o g y
U n i v e r s i t y o f S r i J a ye wa r d e n e p u r a
[email protected]
Aim of Module
The aim of this module is to provide theoretical and practical
knowledge, understanding, and skills on fundamental concepts
of computer programming and cultivate opportunities to utilize
them in programming problem-solving.
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Intended Learning Outcomes
On successful completion of this module, students should be able to:
MLO1 Describe the fundamental concepts of computer programming
MLO2 Write simple computer programs using programming tools, IDEs,
and libraries effectively
MLO3 Use conventions and best practices of programming
MLO4 Apply fundamental programming concepts to solve simple
problems
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Course Outline
▪ Introduction to Programming
▪ Introduction to C programming
▪ C fundamentals
▪ Data types
▪ Operators
▪ Control structures
▪ Functions
▪ Arrays and Strings
▪ Pointers
▪ Structures, Unions and Enumerations
▪ File handling in C
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Assessment
▪ Continuous Assessments(CA) 30%
❖ Assignments
❖ Programming Project
❖ Laboratory Exercises
▪ End Semester Assessment(ESA) 70%
To Pass the exam, CA – 40%
ESE – 35%
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Reference Books
The C Programming Language
by Brian W. Kernighan and Dennis M. Ritchie
C: How to Program
by Paul Deitel and Harvey M. Deitel
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A brief History of Programming
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Hero of Alexandria(10 AD – 70 AD)
▪ He was a mathematician and engineer who was active in his native city
of Alexandria, Roman Egypt.
▪ Hero invented many mechanisms for the Greek theater, including an
entirely mechanical play with puppets which was almost ten minutes in
length.
▪ It was powered by a binary-like system of ropes, knots, and simple
machines operated by a rotating cylindrical cogwheel.
▪ The sound of thunder was produced by the mechanically-timed
dropping of metal balls onto a hidden drum.
▪ These ropes and pulleys could be re-wired in a different way then the
puppets of the play would act differently. Therefore, it is considered as a
programmable play.
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Joseph Marie Jacquard(1752 – 1834)
▪ He was a French weaver and merchant.
▪ He played an important role in the development of the earliest
programmable loom, the "Jacquard loom“.
▪ It used punched card technique which had metal boards with punched
holes. Depending on the binary pattern on the punched cards, the
pattern on the fabric is created.
▪ This mechanism played an important role in the development of other
programmable machines, such as an early version of digital compiler
used by IBM to develop the modern day computer.
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Charles Babbage(1791 – 1871)
▪ A British Mathematician who is considered as the Father of the computer.
▪ He designed the first mechanical computer, Analytical Engine which was
capable of performing mathematical calculations.
▪ It was never built during his time due to the lack of funds from the British
parliament. Later, his design was built into a real machine and was able to
work as he predicted.
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Ada Lovelace(1815 –1852)
▪ A British mathematician and she was the daughter of the famous poet Lord Byron
and a good friend of Charles Babbage.
▪ She translated a paper of a young Italian engineer, which was written about
Analytical Engine, to English. She added her own notes to the translation and one of
those is an algorithm for the Analytical Engine to compute Bernoulli numbers. (1842-
1843)
▪ This is considered as the first computer program; hence the Ada Lovelace is
considered as the first computer programmer.
▪ Later, when analytical engine was built, they checked her program and it worked
perfectly!
▪ She prognosticated the uses of analytical engine is not limited to calculating numbers
and it can solve more complex problems such as playing music.
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Herman Hollerith(1860 – 1929)
▪ He was an American inventor who developed the idea of Electric
Tabulating System, a machine that could read data.
▪ He used punched cards which were called Hollerith Cards which form the
basis for information processing.
▪ In 1896 he started the Tabulating Machine Company which later became
IBM.
▪ In 1906, he developed a plug board or control panel, that allows the
machine to perform different tasks without being reconstructed.
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Alan Turing(1912 – 1954)
▪ He was a computer scientist, mathematician and cryptanalyst.
▪ Turing was highly influential in the development of theoretical
computer science, providing a formalization of the concepts
of algorithm and computation with the Turing machine.
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Tommy Flowers(1905-1998)
▪ He was a telephone engineer at British post office.
▪ In 1943, during the world war II, he built Colossus, the
world's first programmable electronic computer, to help
solve encrypted German messages.
▪ Colossus used vacuum tubes to perform Boolean and
counting operations.
▪ it was programmed by switches and plugs and not by
a stored program.
▪ The existence of the Colossus machines was kept secret
until the mid-1970s.
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Konrad Zuse(1910 - 1995)
▪ He was a was a German civil engineer, inventor and computer
pioneer.
▪ Konrad Zuse designed Plankalkul (plan calculus), the first
algorithmic programming language.
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John Backus(1924 –2007)
▪ He was an American computer scientist who worked at IBM.
▪ He directed the team that invented and
implemented FORTRAN(FORmula TRANslator), which is considered as
the first high-level programming language.
▪ Also, he invented the Backus–Naur form(BNF), a widely used notation
to define formal language syntax.
▪ FORTRAN dramatically changed the way that computers were used.
▪ Has continued to evolve, adding new features & concepts to the
language.
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Dennis Ritchie(1941-2011)
▪ He was an American computer scientist who worked at Bell Labs
Computing Sciences Research Center.
▪ He created the C programming language in 1971.
▪ He developed the Unix operating system with Ken Thompson.
▪ His contribution to the modern advancement of computer science and
technology is enormous, for example, iPhone would be a dream without
C and UNIX.
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Questions?
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