Getting Started With Programming

Notes for the required material 

• You can find a text-only versions of the notes (no text-formatting or graphics) under the Unix directory: /home/231/notes/starting_programming
• Variables, input and output in Pascal (Leestma & Nyhoff Chapter Chapter 3): [PowerPoint] [pdf]

Optional teaching material

Since students are now starting to actually see Pascal code (and hopefully writing some of their own as well) this would be a good time to start talking about programming style.  A reference that can provide students with a starting point can be found in a previous version of the notes for CPSC 231 (written by Manzara L., Becker K with help from Fazel I.).  Although some of the things mentioned in this link won't yet apply (e.g., students won't have seen conditional statements yet) it is recommended that the instructor start to introduce the concept now and have students refer back to it during the remainder of the semester.

Background / Sources of additional information

• Pascal Programming and Problem Solving by Leestma S. and Nyhoff L. 4th Edition (MacMillan Publishing Company).
• Pascal an Introduction to the Art and Science of Programming by Savitch W.J. (The Benjamin / Cummings Publishing Co., Inc.). 
• The Pascal link under the GNU website (since the U of C uses the GNU Pascal compiler gpc).

Teaching Tips

The main point of this section is to introduce the basic parts of a computer program and how commonly used operations are implemented in the language.  This is regardless of the programming language taught in this course (e.g., Pascal, C, C++ etc.) this section should include concepts such as: the basic structure of a program written in the language (e.g., header, some sort of starting point for execution such as a "main"), how basic input and output is implemented by the programming language, what are some of the useful functions built into the language (e.g., exponents, rounding and truncation etc.)