Programming basics

Lecture 1: Information, data and computer

Informare / Latin / – originally meant transmission of knowledge or content.

Information is all around us. We humans, constantly receive, process and provide information. In the past 20th (technical) and today’s 21st (information) century, many information technical devices have been created to help human activity. Ordinary electromechanical calculators, the first computers with electronic lamps, electronic calculators with semiconductor elements, computers with semiconductor chips, smartphones, to modern quantum computers.

Lecture 2: Semantics and syntax of programming languages

Semantics (ancient Greek: σημαντικός [semantikós] – meaning, σημαίνω [semaino] – to mean, point out, σήμα [sema] – sign) studies the meaning (meaning) in language. In this sense, semantics is usually understood as linguistic semantics (as opposed to computer semantics, for example), that is, the science that studies the meaning of words, phrases, and other linguistic objects.

Lecture 3: Programming paradigms

The programming paradigm is the fundamental style of programming. It serves as a model for the overall creation of a program project (consisting of one or more individual programs). The programming paradigm provides (and determines) how the programmer views program execution. For example, in the object-oriented programming paradigm, the programmer may view the program as a set of interacting objects, while in the functionally oriented paradigm, the program may be viewed as a sequence of calculations of functions that do not have their own states.

Lecture 4: Data types

If we could look at a field (one or more cells) in a computer’s memory, we would only see a sequence of zeros and ones in it. What data is written there depends only on how we will interpret the content of the field. The way we interpret what is written in a memory field is called the data type.

Lecture 5: Code conventions

The program code has a number of characteristics classified as external and internal characteristics.

The external characteristics of the code are related to the quality of the result of the program, the convenience of the user, data security, speed, etc.

The internal characteristics of the code are related to its use by other types of users (programmers, quality assessors, analysts) who are qualified to read and understand it. Is it easy to read, is it easy to understand, is it well structured in separate blocks, are the identifiers spelled correctly…