CS137 Pascal Programming

Fall, 1996

Instructor

Roger Hartley, SH 148, telephone 646-1218

Office Hours: Mondays, 1:00 - 3:00 pm; Thursdays, 11:00 am - 1:00 pm.

Where and when

Room: SH113

Time: MWF 10:30 - 11:20

For the first four or five weeks, the Friday session will be spent in the Jacobs PC lab.

Textbook:

Understanding Turbo Pascal: Programming and Problem Solving by Douglas Nance, published by West.

Course outline

Pascal is the ideal language for beginners to learn. This means that the details of the syntax of the langauge can be covered quickly, leaving more time for learning the appropriate skills of programming.

Syllabus

The course is organized into six sections, each of which will address a topic from programming methodology. The content of each topic will use Standard Pascal, but the principles are applicable to any

programming language. In this way, you will gain a good set of programming skills, as well as a thorough knowledge of Pascal. The six topics are:

Code reading - from small fragments to whole functions.
Code simulation - by hand, with paper and pencil.
Program design - top-down stepwise refinement - classes and object-oriented design
Program testing - test sets, limits, unexpected inputs.
Program debugging - tracing and adding extra debugging code.
Program modification - adding requirements, changing requirements, improving efficiency, improving coding.

The breakdown by weeks is:

[1] Introduction, getting started in the lab, Turbo Pascal.
[2] Intro. to computer languages: source files, compiling, object files, executable files, libraries. Code reading: syntax vs. layout, tagging, names, keywords, types, operators, punctuation, comments
[3] Code reading: name scope, declarations and definitions, classes, functions, blocks, loops, levels of commenting
[4 - 5] Code simulation: semantics vs. behavior, paper and pencil tracing, diagrams for memory layout, values, expressions, function calls
[6 - 7] Program design: Top Down Stepwise Refinement, flow charts, tasks, subtasks, type hierarchies, object-oriented design.
[8 - 10] Program testing: interactive programs, expected input, unexpected input, input validation, error messages, error recovery, pathological cases, simple cases, generic cases, representative cases, test data files.
[11 - 12] Program debugging: trace statements replace hand simulation, debuggers, watches, stepping, additional debugging code.
[13 - 15] Program modification: adding requirements, changing requirements, improving efficiency, adding coding, improving coding

Calendar

	   August 1996
	 S  M Tu  W Th  F  S
      	       1  2  3
	 4  5  6  7  8  9 10
	11 12 13 14 15 16 17
[1]	18 19 20 21 22 23 24	Classes start: 21st
[2]	25 26 27 28 29 30 31	Deadline for add: 30th
	   September 1996
	 S  M Tu  W Th  F  S
[3]	 1  2  3  4  5  6  7	Labor day: 2nd
[4]	 8  9 10 11 12 13 14
[5]	15 16 17 18 19 20 21
[6]	22 23 24 25 26 27 28
[7]	29 30
	   October 1996
	 S  M Tu  W Th  F  S
	       1  2  3  4  5
[8]	 6  7  8  9 10 11 12	First exam: 11th
[9]	13 14 15 16 17 18 19	Last drop day: 16th
[10]	20 21 22 23 24 25 26
[11]	27 28 29 30 31
	   November 1996
	 S  M Tu  W Th  F  S
	                1  2
[12]	 3  4  5  6  7  8  9
[13]	10 11 12 13 14 15 16	Moratorium: 15th
[14]	17 18 19 20 21 22 23	
[15]	24 25 26 27 28 29 30	Thanksgiving: 27th - 29th
	   December 1996
	 S  M Tu  W Th  F  S
[16] 	 1  2  3  4  5  6  7	Last day of classes: 6th
[17]	 8  9 10 11 12 13 14	Exam week: 9th - 13th; Final: Fri, 8-10AM
	15 16 17 18 19 20 21   
	22 23 24 25 26 27 28
	29 30 31

Resources

You will need to have access to, or acquire a copy of Borland Turbo Pascal 6.0 or 7.0. Earlier versions may be adequate, but since the textbook needs 6.0 or later, it is better to get a later version. You may run at home or in the Jacobs PC lab. I have access to the same Pascal system, and I can read 3.5 HD floppy disks.

Assessment

There will be one mid-term test and a final comprehensive examination. There will also be three or four lab. exercises early on in the course, and then four or five programming problems starting out easily and graduating to fairly hard at the end of the course. It may

also be necessary to give take-home quizzes for certain parts of the course. The assignment

of credit is as follows:

Test 1: 10%
Final: 15%
Lab. exercises: 10% (2%, 4%, 4%)
Programs: 65% (5%, 10%, 15%, 15%, 20%)

My grading is always flexible, but justice will also be done! ! The penalty for late work is that it receives a maximum C grade, but there will be two cut-off dates. A moratorium date is included in the calendar after which, any work that is due but not handed in will receive a zero. The first day of exam week is the last day for handing in work for credit.