Introduction to Programming for Problem Solving

Last Updated: Fall 2024

Offered during Fall and Spring Semesters each year.

1. Credits and contact hours: 4 credits
2. Instructor's or course coordinator's name: Matthew Holman
3. Text book, title, author, and year: Zybooks
4. Other supplemental materials: Lecture slides prepared by instructor based on textbook

Specific course information

1. Brief description of the content of the course: Introduction to computer programming with an emphasis on problem solving. Topics include: program structures, expressions, variables, decision and logic, iteration, collections, input and output. Program construction and testing. Programming assignments including games and applications. No prior programming experience necessary. This course is intended for Computer Science majors.
2. Prerequisites or co-requisites: Credit or enrollment in MATH 140 or higher
3. Required, elective, or selected elective? Selected elective

Specific goals for the course

1. Specific outcomes of instruction

• Write, debug, and comment well-structured Python scripts from given specifications/ instructions.
• Apply, discover, and determine strategies and techniques to solve problems with code.

Brief list of topics to be covered

• Variables and Objects
• Types
• Expressions
• Strings
• Lists
• Branching
• Loops
• Functions
• Modules
• File Operations
• Classes
• Inheritance
• Dictionaries
• Sets
• Expectations
• Resursion
• Searching and Sorting Algorithms