Computer Science 10: Introduction to Computer Science Dr. Natalie Linnell with credit to Cay Horstmann and Marty Stepp

Who am I?

Computer Science 10: Introduction to Computer Science Dr. Natalie Linnell

Who am I?

How I teach  Teaching is my favorite thing!  My philosophy on my job: It is your job to learn, and it is my job to help you do that.  Your involvement is important  Lots of questions  In-class activities  Not graded, as long as you participate

Who are you?  What’s your major? Year?  Do you have any programming experience?  Optional: Something you’re hoping to get out of this class  Something else about yourself

Computer Science is different  Analogy: Walking into French Poetry class  Need to learn French In our case, c++ The easy part – mostly memorization  Need to learn poetry In our case, problem-solving skills The hard/creative/fun part – memorization will get you nowhere  But I promise: No experience needed!  Trying to learn both at the same time causes problems. Lab will allow us to Separate these two things Talk about WHY you are learning programming Give you the help you need to learn a complex skill

Obligatory starting salaries slide Not just Googlers! -Health tech, computational bio, Ed tech, international development…

Course goals  By the end of the course, you will:  have stronger general problem-solving skills  write medium-scale programs to solve real problems  know some of the kinds of problems computers can solve  Have thought about the impact of technology on society This requires that you not just memorize, but understand the concepts, and be able to apply them to new situations

Course information

Your responsibilities  Come to every class meeting  There will be activities, done in pairs In both class and lab  No laptops in class! If you use your laptop for taking notes, please see me.  You MUST bring your laptop to lab.  This week we will get them set up, so be sure to bring them!  Spend two hours out of class for every scheduled hour in class  Ask questions right away when you are stuck

Homework  Due every Wed.  Except HW1+HW2  One will be posted Thursday, after lab  Start early!  Two papers  CS and Society  Online quizzes before lab and before technology and society discussions  Grade: 30% HW+papers, 15% midterm 1, 25% midterm 2, 30% final  Quizzes, midterm exam and final exam. You MUST be able to attend these dates  In-class and take-home essay components

Questions about logistics?

What is programming? program: A set of instructions  to be carried out by a computer. program execution: The act of carrying out the instructions  contained in a program.  programming language: A systematic set of rules used to describe computations in a format that is editable by humans.

Write me a program for making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich program: A set of instructions to be carried out by a computer. program execution: The act of carrying out the instructions contained in a program. programming language: A systematic set of rules used to describe computations in a format that is editable by humans.

“Language” The core challenge of computer science is making our big smart human brains learn how to take tiny steps like a (stupid) computer.

To Hardware!

Save the rest for later

We are separating language from problem-solving The hard part: Problem-solving - In lecture, we will use pseudocode. This allows us to express the ideas of what we want to do in the size steps that a computer can understand, without getting bogged down in the details of C++ - In order to be able to show you results, we will model our pseudocode on a language called Python. However, I will not expect you to be able to write Python code, and when I ask you to write pseudocode, it does not have to be perfect Python code -The good news: This is the creative, interesting part! The less-hard part: C++ - In the lab, we will take the ideas that we've expressed in pseudocode, and translate them in into C++ - C++ has its quirks, so this is sometimes counter-intutitive -The good news: This is the part of the class you can memorize! Might do some of this in lecture the first week

Ask Questions  The first week or two might feel easy. After that it won’t  You will be stuck. A lot.  I am too – all the time!  You MUST ask questions  Come to office hours!  You are learning to do something  It is impossible to memorize your way through this class.