CS 1063 Overview

CS 1063 is a course in computer programming for those who have never programmed a computer before, developing elementary programming skills using Java. The specific objectives for CS 1063 are:

• Student will learn programming terminology and will obtain a solid grasp of the basic mechanics of programming.  This includes:
  • Introduction to problem solving for programming (i.e., "how to think about solving the problem" including techniques such as pseudo-code or flowcharts)
  • Syntax and program structure, including Java identifier rules
  • Primitive data types and declarations
  • Operations on ints (including mod), doubles (including truncation), and booleans
  • String objects and basic String methods
  • Basic input with Scanner, including validating input
  • Basic output using System.out.println
  • Conditional execution with if, else if, and else
  • Basic looping, including for and while loops
  • Static methods and method invocation
  • One-dimensional arrays of primitive types and Strings including the following topics: declaration, initialization, assignment, traversal, and methods
  • Basics of identifying and fixing errors
• Students will learn to understand code.  Students should be able to trace the execution of code fragments, particularly simple cases such as keeping track of the values of variables through a short series of computations, including branches, loops, and method calls.
• Students will learn basic programming.  Students should be able to write simple programs.  Examples include: computing the area or volume of a shape given the formula, translating between units (e.g., miles to kilometers), counting the iterations of a while loop, taking unstructured input inside a loop and producing tabular output, or summing the values in an array.  Students should be able to write reasonably correct Java code on paper, so that their programming skill can be evaluated by exams.