CS125: Introduction to Programming Principles

Course Outline

CS125 has the following major sections:

• Phase 1: Simple programs (weeks 1 to 4).
• Phase 2: Using objects (weeks 4 to 7).
• Phase 3: Simple user-defined objects (weeks 7 and 8).
• Phase 4: Structured data (weeks 9 and 10).
• Phase 5: More Advanced objects (weeks 11 and 12).

The detailed outline:

• Week 1:
  • Introduction to the course
  • Computer hardware and memory; programming languages (Sav 1.1)
  • A First Java application program (Sav 1.3)
  • Compilers, interpreters and (virtual) machines (Sav 1.1, 1.3)
  • Using an IDE
  • Tokens, types, and values (Sav 2.1)
  • Number systems and data representation (Sav 2.1)
    
  
  
• Week 2:
  • Basic program structure (Sav 2.1)
  • Variables and constants (Sav 2.1, 2.4)
  • Operators (Sav 2.1)
  • Expressions and simple statements (Sav 2.1)
    
  • The class String (Sav 2.2) including a brief overview of objects (i.e., methods, classes, but not constructors)
  • Simple output (through a friendly library) (Sav 2.3)
  
  
• Week 3:
  • Conditional statements: if-else (Sav 3.1)
  • Logical and boolean expressions (Sav 3.1)
  • Nested and compound statements (Sav 3.1)
  
  
• Week 4:
  • Loops: while (Sav 3.2)
  • Different kinds of loops (for, do-while) (Sav 3.2)
  • Nesting loops (Sav 3.3)
    
  • Tracing and debugging (Sav 3.3)
  
  
• Week 5:
  • Defining methods (Sav 4.1)
  • Invoking methods on objects of user defined classes (Sav 4.1)
  • Simple parameters (Sav 4.1)
  • Return values (Sav 4.1)
  • Instance variables (Sav 4.1)
  • local variables (Sav 4.1)
  
  
• Week 6:
  • Scope, visibility and persistence; encapsulation (Sav 4.1, 4.2)
  • Accessor and mutator methods (Sav 4.2)
  • Variables of a class type and objects, writing your own classes (Sav 4.3)
  
  
• Week 7:
  • Objects in the memory model (Sav 4.3)
  • Objects as parameters (Sav 4.3)
  • Methods calling methods; helper methods being private (Sav 5.1)
  • Static methods and variables (Sav 5.2)
  
  
• Week 8:
  • Top down design, systematic testing (Sav 5.3)
  • Overloading (Sav 5.4)
  • Writing constructors (Sav 5.5)
  
  
• Week 9:
  • Arrays: declaration, creation and indexing (Sav 6.1)
  • Arrays of primitive types (Sav 6.1)
  • Iterating through arrays (Sav 6.1)
  • Arrays as parameters and return values (Sav 6.2)
  • Arrays of objects (Sav 6.2)
  
  
• Week 10:
  • Searching arrays and simple array processing (Sav 6.3)
  • Sorting an array (selection sort) (Sav 6.4)
  • Two dimensional arrays (Sav 6.5)
  
  
• Week 11:
  • Class structure and inheritance (Sav 7.1)
  • Accessing the parent class (Sav 7.1)
  • Overriding methods (Sav 7.1)
  • Simple OO dispatch (Sav 7.1)
  
  
• Week 12:
  • Inheritance (Sav 7.2)
  • History of computing (not in Savitch, except as little asides)