Republic of the Philippines

Province of Cotabato
Municipality of Makilala
MAKILALA INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
Makilala, Cotabato
________________________________________________________________________________________
COLLEGE OF TECHNOLOGY AND INFORMATION SYSTEMS
BACHELOR OF SCIENCE IN INFORMATION SYSTEM

Course Number : CC101

Course Title : Introduction to Computing
Credits : 3 units (3 hours lecture; 2 hours lab.)
Module # :8
Duration : 1 week
Instructor : Francis B. Itol

I. LEARNING OUTCOME(S):

After reading this module, you are expected to:

1. define programming; and

2. identify the benefits in using computers and programming.

II. TOPIC(S):

i. Introduction to Programming
1. What is programming?
2. Benefits of Computers and Programming
3. Programming Development Life Cycle

III. REFERENCES

a. ONLINE RESOURCES
http://www.cplusplus.com

b. TEXTBOOK RESOURCES
C++ Programming Tutorial, Juan Soulié, June 2010

IV. COURSE CONTENT

What is Programming?

 Programming is a way to
“instruct the computer to
perform various tasks”.

 You need to know how to

program, in order to be
able to tell a computer
what you want it to do.

Understanding Programming in layman terms

CC101 – Introduction to Computing 1

  “Instruct the computer”: this basically means that you provide the computer a set of instructions that are
written in a language that the computer can understand. The instructions could be of various types.

For example:
Adding 2 numbers,
Rounding off a number

 Just like we humans can understand a few languages (English, Spanish, Mandarin, French, etc.), so is
the case with computers. Computers understand instructions that are written in a specific syntactical
form called a programming language.

 “Perform various tasks”: the tasks could be simple ones like we discussed above (adding 2 numbers, rounding
off a number) or complex ones which may involve a sequence of multiple instructions.

For example:
Calculating simple interest, given principal, rate and time.
Calculating the average return on a stock over the last 5 years.

 The above 2 tasks require complex calculations. They cannot usually be expressed in simple
instructions like adding 2 numbers.

 Hence, in summary, Programming is a way to tell computers to do a specific task.

Benefits of Computers and Programming

 Computers are fast: computers are amazingly fast. If you know how to properly utilize the power of Computer
programming, you can do wonders with it. For a typical computer of today’s time, an addition of 2 numbers
which could be as big as a billion each takes hardly a nanosecond. Read again - nanosecond! That means that in
1 second, a computer can perform about a billion additions. Can any human ever do that? Forget a billion
additions a second, typical human can’t even do 10 additions per second. So, computers offer great speed.

 Computers are cheap: if you were a stock market analyst and you had to monitor the data of say 1000 stocks
so that you can quickly trade them. Imagine the hassle that would create if you were to do it manually! It is just
impractical. While you are performing your calculation on the stock’s performance, the price may change. The
other alternative is to hire people so that you can monitor more stocks in parallel. That means your cost goes up
significantly. Not to mention the trouble you will face if some of your employees commit a calculation error in
the process. You may end up losing money! Contrast that with the case where you use a computer. Computers
can process a huge amount of information quickly and reliably. 1000 stocks are nothing for computers in the
21st century.

 Computers can work 24x7: Computers can work 24x7 without getting exhausted. So, if you have a task that is
big enough, you can without worries allocate it to a computer by programming it and sleep peacefully.

What is Programming Language?

 As mentioned above, Computers understand instructions that are written in a specific syntactical form called a
programming language. A programming language provides a way for a programmer to express a task so that it
could be understood and executed by a computer.

Examples: Java, C++, Python, Visual Basic

Why should you learn Computer Programming?

CC101 – Introduction to Computing 2

  Programming is fun: Using Programming, you can create your own games, your personal blog/profile page, a
social networking site like Facebook, a search engine like Google or an e-commerce platform like Amazon!
Imagine creating your own game and putting it on Play Store and getting thousands and thousands of
downloads!

 The backbone of a Technology Company: The backbones of today’s technology companies like Google,
Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, and many others, are giant computer programs written by a collaboration
of thousands of skilled programmers. If you have the right business insight, knowing programming can help you
create the next big tech company.

 Pretty good salary: Computer Programmers are paid extremely well almost all across the world. Top
programmers in Silicon Valley make millions of dollars every year. Quite a few companies offer to start salaries
as high as $100,000 per year.

Challenges

 Need to learn what computers can do.

 Need to learn a programming language.

Program Development Life Cycle

The following are six steps in the Program Development Life Cycle:

1. Analyze the problem. The computer user must figure out the problem, then decide how to resolve the problem
- choose a program.

2. Design the program. A flow chart is important to use during this step of the PDLC. This is a visual diagram of
the flow containing the program. This step will help you break down the problem.

3. Code the program. This is using the language of programming to write the lines of code. The code is called the
listing or the source code. The computer user will run an object code for this step.

4. Debug the program. The computer user must debug. This is the process of finding the "bugs" on the computer.
The bugs are important to find because this is known as errors in a program.

5. Formalize the solution. One must run the program to make sure there are no syntax and logic errors. Syntax
are grammatical errors and logic errors are incorrect results.

6. Document and maintain the program. This step is the final step of gathering everything together. Internal
documentation is involved in this step because it explains the reason one might have made a change in the
program or how to write a program.

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