COSC 235: Programming and Problem Solving
February 4, 2009

Joseph D. Sloan
sloanjd @ wofford.edu

	Announcements: Shay Ellison will be working in the Computer lab and will be available to assist you Sunday through Thursday from 8:00 PM to 10:00 PM starting next Tuesay. (He should also be around tonight (2/4/09). He is not there to do your work for you but rather to assist you.

What is programming

Casting spells
A creative activity—challenging, fun, requires practice to learn, at times frustrating
Dealing with frustrations—start early and allow enough time, take breaks, get help
Approaches—Disciplined programming (better for production environments) vs. experimental programming (better for learning)

Programming Languages

Compiled vs. Interpreted -- last time
Levels
Church's Thesis
Syntax vs. Semantics

Program Comments

Be sure your comments include:
The file name
Your Name
The Date
"Pledged"
Any appropriate citations

Using IDLE

Here are some terms we used today.  Most should be familiar but make sure you know them all.
IDLE, IDE—integrated development environment
Guido van Rossum
prompt
interactive mode
math operations: + - * / ** %
types
long numbers
keywords & reserved words
expression
input
output
string literal
error messages
functions
comments
parameters—formal and actual
variables
case-sensitive
camel capitalization

This page was created by Joe Sloan.
It was last modified around: 04 February 2009
Send mail to: sloanjd@wofford.edu