Chapter 1: Introduction to Computers and Programming

This chapter begins by giving a very concrete and easy-to-understand explanation of how computers work, how data is stored and manipulated, and why we write programs in high-level languages. An introduction to Python, interactive mode, script mode, and the IDLE environment are also given.

Learning Outcomes Chapter 1

Upon completion of this week's material students should be able to:

describe the nature and content of CIS 106;
describe the primary components a modern digital electronic computer system;
describe the field of computer science and common specializations within the field;
briefly describe notion of an algorithm and its importance in computer science
describe what compilers and interpreters do, and how they compare to one another;
describe several major programming languages and the role of each in the history of programming languages;
use the IDLE to initiate a new Python application project Appendix B;
create and run a Python program with console output Appendix B;

Highlights This Week

In addition to time management to be successful in this course, you should follow these tasks weekly

read the overview page in each assigned module
read the chapter in the textbook
read the lecture notes posted in modules/powerpoints
participate in the discussion forums
review the supplement documents and example code posted in the modules
complete the module quiz
complete the module assignments

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