CMPT 166 Study Guide - Fall 2018, Comprehensive Midterm Notes - Computer Mouse, Ellipse, Random-Access Memory
12 Oct 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
CMPT 166
MIDTERM EXAM
STUDY GUIDE
Fall 2018
Introduction to Programming with Processing
In these notes you will learn:
• What this course is about.
• The pre-requisites for taking this course.
• The basic components of a computer.
• The definition of a programming language.
• Some examples of popular programming languages.
What is this course about?
This course is an introduction to computer programming using the Processing language. You don’t
need to know anything about programming to take this course. But we do assume you:
• Have interest in learning how to program.
• Enjoy playing with graphics and animation. You don’t need any artistic skill, just a
willingness to learn about basic 2D-animation and graphics.
• Know high school algebra. We’ll be using things like (x, y) coordinates, and few other
mathematical ideas that should be no problem for you if you’ve taken a high-school algebra
course.
Computer Programming
Computers are everywhere, and they all run programs. A program is a sequence of instructions that tell
the computer what to do, and a programmers job is to create and arrange these
instructions. Software refers to a collection of programs.
Programs are usually written to solve a particular problem. For example, a word processor solves the
problem of editing documents, and a web browser solves the problem of conveniently accessing files
on other computers.
We’ll start with very basic programs, and work our way up to object-oriented programming (OOP).
What is a Computer?
Since programs run on computers, it’s useful spend some time exploring what a computer actually is.
All computers have, at least, the following basic components:
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
• A central processing unit, known as the CPU. The CPU is the so- called “brain” of the
computer that makes logical decisions, does arithmetic, and manipulates the computer’s
memory.
Note: These days, many PCs have more than one CPU (or core). Programming multiple-CPU
computers is much more challenging than programming single- CPU computers because of
the difficulty of coordinating the CPUs. We will stick to single-CPU programming in this course.
• Random-access memory, known as RAM. RAM is where computers can store and retrieve
data. At a very low level, you can think of RAM as a sequence of 0s and 1s (bits), although in
this course we will rarely, if ever, need to be concerned with such low-level details. Instead, we
will imagine that the computer stores data as numbers and strings of characters.
An important feature of RAM is its speed: data in RAM can be stored and
retrieved very efficiently.
• Input and output devices, known as I/O devices. Input devices — such as mice, keyboards,
touchscreens, disk drives, and video cameras, etc. — let us put data into a computer. Output
devices — such as monitors, speakers, printers, and disk drives, etc. — extract data from the
computer.
Some devices, such as a disk drive, allow for both input and output.
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
In these notes you will learn: what this course is about, the pre-requisites for taking this course, the basic components of a computer, the definition of a programming language, some examples of popular programming languages. This course is an introduction to computer programming using the processing language. You don"t need to know anything about programming to take this course. But we do assume you: have interest in learning how to program, enjoy playing with graphics and animation. You don"t need any artistic skill, just a willingness to learn about basic 2d-animation and graphics: know high school algebra. We"ll be using things like (x, y) coordinates, and few other mathematical ideas that should be no problem for you if you"ve taken a high-school algebra course. Computers are everywhere, and they all run programs. A program is a sequence of instructions that tell the computer what to do, and a programmers job is to create and arrange these instructions.
