CLASS 1

ENGN-1310 Computer Programming

 TODAY’S AGENDA

INTRODUCTION

QUESTION & ANSWER SESSION

BASICS OF COMPUTERS

COMPUTATIONAL THINKING
 CHECK-IN

Your Name
What you think about computer programming?
What is your expectation from this course?
Is there anything that you want me to know about you?
 OUTLINE
Learning Objectives:
1. To understand how computers were developed.
What is a 2. To understand the internal language of computers.
01 Computer? 3. To understand what computational thinking is.
4. To understand the four key techniques of
computational thinking.
5. To understand how to use the technique of
decomposition.
6. To understand how to use the technique of pattern
Computational recognition.
02 Thinking 7. To understand how to use the technique of
abstraction.
 What is a
01 Computer?
EVOLUTION OF COMPUTERS
What is a
transistor?
What are the components of a
computer?
COMPUTER MOTHERBOARD
WHAT IS COMPUTATIONAL THINKING?

Computational thinking allows us to take a complex problem,

understand what the problem is and develop possible solutions.

We can then present these solutions in a way that a computer, a

human, or both, can understand.

There are four key techniques to computational thinking:

Decomposition - breaking down a complex problem or system

into smaller, more manageable parts.
Pattern Recognition – looking for similarities among and
within problems.
Abstraction – focusing on the important information only,
ignoring irrelevant detail.
Algorithm Design - developing a step-by-step solution to the
problem, or the rules to follow to solve the problem.
Is computational thinking programming?

NO!
L It is not even thinking like a computer,
as computers do not, and cannot, think.
es pueden ayudarte a captar la atención
del público
 Step 1 - Decomposition

The smaller parts can be examined

and solved, or designed
individually, as they are simpler to
work with.
 EXAMPLE

How do you go about for

cleaning up a messy
room?
 Step 2 – Pattern Recognition

Problems are easier to solve when

they share patterns, because we can
use the same problem-solving
solution wherever the pattern
exists.
 EXAMPLE
Imagine that we want to draw a series of cats.
Patterns make our task simpler.
What happens when we don’t look for patterns?

Each time we wanted to draw a cat, we would have to stop and work out
what a cat looked like. This would slow us down.

This would be very inefficient, and a poor way to go about solving the
cat-drawing task.
Our cats might not even look like cats. In this case, because we didn’t
recognize the pattern, we would be solving the problem incorrectly.
 Step 3– Abstraction

It helps us to focus on the real

problem.
In pattern recognition we looked at the problem of having to draw a
series of cats.

We noted that all cats have general characteristics, which are common
to all cats, In addition, each cat has specific characteristics, called as
specifics.

Specifics are irrelevant and can be filtered out.

 Exercise
You are an engineer in charge of writing a new computer application to use
your cell phones camera to recognize plants and trees on PEI. The camera
will take pictures of plants/ trees, and this image is then digitized and
analyzed to compare it to a database of known foliage.
 Step 4-Algorithm Design

It helps us to focus on the real

problem.
https://youtu.be/lSu_HKPJXWk