Introduction to Programming

Offered during Fall and Spring Semesters each year.

Credits: 2 credits

Course Information

1. Brief description of the content of the course: Use of personal computer and workstation operating systems and beginning programming. Project-oriented approach to computer operation and programming, including use of tools to aid in programming. Topics from computer history, using basic Windows and Unix tools, program structure, expression, variables, decision and logic, and iteration. No prior computer experience necessary.
2. Prerequisites or co-requisites: None

Course Goals

1. Students can apply basic computer programming concepts: variables, operators & built-in libraries, conditional statements, functions, string & lists, loop statements; to write small-scale computer programs for simple real-world problems using the programming language Python.
2. For each of the basic programming concepts, a student will be able to identify and describe the appropriate situations where the concept can be applied.
3. For each of the basic programming concepts, a student will be able to write in correct Python syntax. 
4. Given a simple real-world problem a student will be able to identify the appropriate basic programming concepts to be applied and will be able to write a small-scale program using Python. 

Topics

1. An introduction to the process of problem-solving using computers
2. Procedural programming: variables, operators & built-in libraries, conditional statements, functions, string & lists, loop statements (using the Python language).