Section outline
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Class Schedule: Programming & Problem Solving Online Class (PC-E) 08:30 AM - 11:30 AM (Saturday)
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Welcome to Problem Solving! . I am your course teacher and I'm excited to have you in the class and look forward to your contributions to the learning community. To begin, I recommend taking a few minutes to explore the course site. Review the material we’ll cover each week, and preview the assignments you’ll need to complete to pass the course. Click Forum/Understanding to see forums where you can discuss the course material with fellow students taking the class. If you have questions about course content, please post them in the forums to get help from others in the course community.
In this course we will solve the problem using programming language which is basically C. Many novice programmers attempt to dive right into writing the code (in the programming language) as the first step. However, writing the code is actually a much later step in the process. A good programmer will plan first and write second, possibly breaking down a large programming task into several smaller tasks in the process. Even when cautioned to plan first and code second, many programming students ignore the advice—after all, why “waste” 30 minutes planning when you are time-crunched from all the work you have to do. This tradeoff, however, presents a false economy—30 minutes planning could save hours of trying to make the code work properly. Well planned code is not only more likely to be correct (or at least closer to correct), but is also easier to understand—and thus fix.
Good luck as you get started, and I hope you enjoy the course!
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Course Rationale:
Regardless of the area of study, computer science is all about solving problems with computers. The problems that we want to solve can come from any real-world problem or perhaps even from the abstract world.Computer programming is at the heart of computer science. It is the implementation portion of software development, application development and software engineering efforts, transforming ideas and theories into actual, working solutions.
Course Objective:
The primary purpose of this course is to teach students the basic of pure programming and problem solving. This course provides students with a comprehensive study of the C programming language.The course emphasizes problem-solving and empirical skills through the process of designing,implementing, and executing C programs.
Course Outcomes (CO’s):
CO1 Able to solve computing problems using programming concepts and learn the basic concept of ACM Problem solving techniques. CO2 Able to apply fundamental programming elements including: variable, use of datatypes and data structures, decision structures, loop structures, pointer, string, console,file IO, and functions. CO3 Able to specify the problem requirements, analyze the problem, design the algorithm to solve the problem and implement with the help of programming language CO4 Able to apply the knowledge of programming and problem solving in real file problem.
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1. Programming in ANSI C- E Balagurusamy.
2. The C programming language. Prentice Hall, 1988, by Dennis Ritchie
3. Teach Yourself C : Herbert Shieldt
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Brain-storming: Why You Should Learn to Program
Hello Dear Students and welcome to programming fundamentals which title as Introduction to programming in C. I'm excited that you have the chance to come learn to program with me. It will be a great way to learn. You don't need any prior background in programming, just an eagerness to learn and excitement about thinking through problems.
Just mentioned, this is great if you're new to programming. You might be thinking about learning for a wide variety of reasons. Maybe you want to become a professional software developer, if so this is a great starting point. We're going to build solid fundamentals that will serve you well in both C and any other language.Or maybe you want programming skills to use in some other discipline. I know a lot of social scientists and natural scientists who have found programming necessary, to analyze the data that they have to explore the problems in their field. You may have already taken a computer fundamentals course and be looking to expand your skills. This can be a great chance to both build your programming skills from solid fundamentals And to learn a new language.
So what's special about the way that I am going to teach you? I am going to start from the very beginning. A lot of programming courses assume you can just figure out how to write code from seeing a few examples. I am not going to do that. Instead, I am going to teach you a step-by-step approach(actually seven steps) to solve programming problems. I will discuss later how this seven step approach is a great way to tackle any programming problem.
I am also going to teach you how to read code as well as how to write it. After all, how can you write if you can't read? For every piece of syntax that I teach you, I am also going to teach you the semantics, what exactly the code does. For any code you write, you will be able to execute it by hand, saying exactly what every line does. I want you to learn that everything in programming is about well defined rules, which you can understand and follow, or even execute yourself.
So, where do we go from here? The rest of this course is all about computational thinking. You'll learn a lot of important concepts, how to design an algorithm to solve a problem, how to execute a piece of code by hand.
You will learn to use a variety of tools that are important to develop your code. You'll learn things like how to turn your code into an actual program that the computer can run, which is called compiling. You'll also learn about testing and debugging, finding and fixing mistakes in your program.
In this course, you will learn about ways to store more complex data using pointers, arrays and strings. If you don't know what these are now no problem we'll explain them when we get there.
Also learn how to interact with the user and the system, as well as how to dynamically allocate memory when you don't know in advance how much data you have to work with. So, let's get started. Thank you.
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BrainStorming:
The Seven Steps
This figure shows a high-level overview of the programming process. A programmer starts by devising the algorithm for the task she is trying to solve. We will split this planning phase into four steps in the process of writing a program, which we will discuss in more detail shortly. At the end of these four steps, the programmer should have a complete plan for the task at hand—and be convinced that the plan is a good one.
After devising a proper algorithm, she is ready for Step 5 of the programming process: translating her plan into code in the programming language she is using for her current project. Initially, translation to code will go slowly, as you will be unfamiliar with the syntax, likely needing to look up the specific details often. However, even if slow, it should be fairly straightforward. You already devised the plan, so you should have done all the actual problem-solving tasks already. Your algorithm may have some complex steps, but that is fine. As we will see later, whenever your algorithm calls for a step that is too complicated to be simply translated into a few lines of code, you should turn that step into its own separate programming task and repeat the programming process on it. In the next course, we will discuss translation to code in much more detail, as well as how to turn the code into something that the computer can run.
Once the algorithm is implemented in code, the programmer must test her code, which is the 6th Step of the programming process. By testing the program, the programmer tries to uncover errors in her algorithm or implementation. If the programmer finds errors in her program, she debugs the program (Step 7): finding out the cause of the error, and fixing it. The programmer may need to return to the algorithm design steps (if the error lies in the algorithm) or to translation to code (if the error lies in the implementation) to correct the error. The programmer then repeats all of the later steps.
At some point, the programmer completes enough test cases with no errors to become convinced that her program is correct. Note that we said the programmer becomes convinced that her program is correct. No amount of testing can guarantee that the program is correct. Instead, more testing increases the programmer's confidence that the code is correct. When the programmer is convinced her code is correct, she has successfully completed the task at hand. We will discuss testing and debugging in much more detail in the next course.
Programming: Plan First, Then Code
Many novice programmers attempt to dive right into writing the code (in the programming language) as the first step. However, writing the code is actually a much later step in the process. A good programmer will plan first and write second, possibly breaking down a large programming task into several smaller tasks in the process. Even when cautioned to plan first and code second, many programming students ignore the advice—after all, why “waste” 30 minutes planning when you are time-crunched from all the work you have to do. This tradeoff, however, presents a false economy—30 minutes planning could save hours of trying to make the code work properly. Well planned code is not only more likely to be correct (or at least closer to correct), but is also easier to understand—and thus fix.
To write a program which takes any number N and determines if N is prime, we must first figure out the algorithm for this class of problems. As we said before, if we attack the problem by blindly writing code, we will end up with a mess—much like constructing a sky scraper with no plan. Coming up with the appropriate algorithm for a class of problems is a challenging task, and typically requires significant work and thought.
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Final Survey:
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