CMPT 130 Description

 

An introductory course to computing science and programming. Students will learn fundamental concepts and terminology of computing science, acquire elementary skills for programming in the C++ programming language and be exposed to diverse fields within, and applications of computing science.

 

Topics

Introduction to Programming and Computer Science: hardware and software, computer organization, what computer science is about, programming languages, programming tools

Introduction to Programming: values, variables, types, expressions, operators, character-based input and output

Functions: function libraries, passing parameters, returning values, the call stack

Decisions: Boolean logic, if statements, relational operators

Repetition: while loops, for loops, recursion

Aggregate Data Types: arrays, strings, records

Debugging Strategies: using a debugger, writing tests, using assertions and invariants, common bugs

File I/O and Error Handling: why error-handling is important, reading and writing text files, recognizing errors, signalling errors, handling errors

Fundamental Algorithms: searching, sorting, numerical algorithms, introduction to algorithm complexity

Dynamic Memory: pointers and addresses, allocating heap and de-allocating variables in dynamic memory

Software Design: organizing programs into modules

 

CMPT 130 Home

 

John Edgar (johnwill@sfu.ca)