CMPT 120 Lecture 1: Introduction

• School: Simon Fraser University
• Department: Computing Science
• Course: CMPT 120
• Professor: Liaqat Ali

Document Summary

An elementary introduction to computing science and computer programming, suitable for students with little or no programming background. We will design our algorithms in english, and translate them into the python programming language. This will allow us to communicate with computers to solve our problem. Programming / writing code - a way of communicating. Computing science is: problem solving, using programming languages. Computer scientists are all about solving problems. They use computers to automate solutions to problems and to do things faster and more accurately than we can do by hand or manually. Learning a new language is a 4-step process: design an algorithm, write it in python, test and deploy. Make sure it works by testing your application: change the world. Learn how to design solutions to problems by explaining ideas step-by-step. Learn how to communicate your solution in a language that a machine understands.