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MWF 9:30AM-10:20AM Bagby 111
Professor Tom Valente
Bagby 123 x6210
email: tvalente
MWR 2:30PM-4:00PM, other times by appointment and by announcement
Foundations Of Computer Science, 2nd Edition by Forouzan and Mosharraf
This is a broad based introduction to computer science, using a hands-on approach to learning. This course has no prerequisites except a willingness to pursue the course objectives.
Computer Science is the study of the kinds of problems that computers can solve and how they actually, in the end, solve them. At the heart of computer science is the notion of algorithm . An algorithm is a careful and thorough step-by-step description (or "recipe") of how to solve a problem. The process of programming a computer begins with the programmer expressing (perhaps informally) an algorithm that will do so. The process continues with the programmer then encoding the algorithm in a programming language such as Java or C++. Remarkably, a computer does not understand nor can it execute instructions written in such languages. Instead, the algorithm is executed by a computer's hardware, the circuits of which understand only 0 and 1 (by detecting either high or low voltage).
The first part of the course will focus on how the computer, at its lowest levels, actually processes information. We'll learn how all information, regardless of its type (textual, numerical, audio, video) is represented in binary. We'll then learn how a computer's circuits can perform fundamental tasks such as adding two numbers or comparing two numbers.
After we've understood enough about the behavior of the computer at is lowest levels, we'll "zoom out" to think about what a person (i.e. programmer) must do in order to have the computer solve a problem. We'll study algorithms, both how to express them and how to understand whether or not an algorithm can produce answers in a reasonable amount of time. We'll do this by investigating algorithms to solve problems such as sorting a list of numbers or searching a list of names for some desired name.
Of course, an algorithm must expressed as a computer program in order for a computer to execute its instructions. Thus, later in the course, we will look at how computer programming languages have evolved to the ones that are in use today. We'll use a modern high-level programming language to learn about both procedural and object-oriented programming, the latter being particularly important in modern programming.
Finally, we'll investigate one of today's hot issues - that of secure communications. We'll study a couple of modern methods for encoding secret messages (an area known as Cryptography). In doing so, we'll understand once and for all that computers DO have limitations, and that this is not necessarily a bad thing!
In-class Tests (3 in class - Sep 23rd, Oct 28th, Nov 21st) | 30% (12-12-6) |
Final Exam (Saturday Dec 10th at 9:00AM) | 25% |
Quizzes | 10% |
Homework | 35% |
Monday Aug 29
  Week of Sep 5
  Week of Sep 12
Test 1 Study Guide
Week of Sep 26
  Week of Oct 3
Mon Oct 10
  Wed Oct 12
  Fri Oct 14
  Wed and Fri Oct 19-21
Test 2 Study Guide (Download)
Wed Nov 2
Nov 7 Sequential Search
Nov 9 Binary Search
Solutions from Dec 2
FINAL EXAM CHECK LIST!
A Scratchpad for doing basic Javascript programming
Our first day attendance experiment as a Javascript program.
Click here for a simulator that allows us to construct circuits that use the logic operations we learned.
Click here to program the VSC-32 in machine language.
Click here to enter a VSC-32 machine language program in hex.
Assembly Language Programming on the VSC-32
A cipher used by Julius Caesar
A Caesar cipher with no word length clues!
A more general substitution cipher