Programming Foundations

Each participant will leave with a recognised certificate

• As scripting languages become more powerful and available traditional tasks of a programmer are invading other IT functions. System administrators may have to write complex scripts which impact on mission critical systems, often with no programming experience or training.

• Support staff often have to communicate with development staff, and misunderstandings easily arise from cultural differences.

• This course gives a basic understanding of how computer systems work from a programmer's perspective, and how to use this knowledge to produce good code. It also enables technical staff who are not programmers to gain a perspective of software development.

Chapter 1: System Components

• Computer system components

• Central hardware components

• Software components

• Operating systems

• Processes

• Virtual memory

• Virtualisation

• Applications

Bringing it all together

Chapter 2: First Steps

• What is a program?

• Programming languages

• Creating a program

• A first program

• What does a program do?

• Paper to program

• Giving names to data items

• Special characters

• Applications and libraries

• Administration tools and utilities

Programming tools and utilities

Chapter 3: Software Production

• Where does software come from?

• Do you really have to pay?

• Software licenses

• Stages in software production

• Understanding the specification

• Agile software production

• Basic flowcharting

• Most programs consist of three parts

• Checking and testing

• Version control

Prototyping

Chapter 4: Data

• Representing data

• Bits, bytes and words

• Conventions

• Fundamental types

• Getting it wrong

• Representing characters

• Sort order of numbers and text

• The problem with the Euro

• Representing integers

• Representing floating point

• Representing time

• Arrays and lists

• Associative arrays

Records

Chapter 5: Variables and Operators

• Variables and constants

• Objects

• Life of a variable – scope

• An alternative to scope

• Choosing variable names

• Names you should not use

• Operations on data

• Choosing variable types

• Assignment

• Simple operations?

• Precedence

Comments

Chapter 6: Flow Control

• Flow control

• Altering program flow

• Simple decision statements

• What is truth?

• Boolean operators

• Logical operators

• Using logical operators

• Loops

• Array processing

• Language supplied iterators

• Interrupt handling

Exception handling

Chapter 7: Program Structure

• Scope revisited

• Named blocks

• Calling a subroutine

• Passing a copy of data

• Passing a reference to data

• Returning results

• Entry points

• Modules and Libraries

Asynchronous subroutines – Threads

Chapter 8: Input and Output

• What is a file?

• File systems

• Exchangeable file systems

• I/O Libraries and Layers

• Opening a file

• Opening a file – checks

• Opening a file – modes

• Sequential access

• Random access

• Buffering

• Concurrency issues

Locking strategies

Chapter 9: Building Applications

• Compilation

• Linking

• Loading and running

• Process attribute inheritance

• Portability

• Emulators

• Interpretation

• The third way: Byte-code

• Pre-processing

• Optimisation

Debuggers

Chapter 10: User Interfaces

• User IO

• Text terminal IO

• Pros and Cons of text terminal interface

• Text terminal IO development cycle

• Graphical User Interfaces

• GUI Examples

• Pros and cons of GUIs

• Client-Server Systems

• Web application development

• Frameworks

• Printing

Accessibility

Chapter 11: Coding Style

• Virtues of a programmer

• Readability and style

• Naming conventions

• Error handling

• Programming for change

• The need for speed

• Programming for performance

• Constants – aren't

• Portability and flexibility

Help!

Chapter 12: Support and Debugging

• Why does software have bugs?

• Programs break!

• Understanding the problem

• End-user discussions

• Finding a solution

• Debugging a compiled program

• Other tools

• Some bug types

• Trace statements

• Dealing with 3rd party support

Distributing a patch