This programming course teaches basic concepts in imperative and object-oriented programming and corresponding data structures.

Students will learn to use an industrial-strength object-oriented programming language and form basic mental models of how computer programs execute and interact with their environment. The course focuses on key aspects of solving programming problems: reasoning about a problem description to design appropriate data representations and function/method descriptions, to find examples, to write, test, debug, and otherwise evaluate the relevant code, and to present and defend their approach.

Students will learn to effectively use a large standard library and key standard data structures, including lists, trees, hash tables, and graphs. The course also introduces the basics of reasoning about the time and space complexity of algorithms, in particular as related to the above data structures.

The Advanced version of this course (COMP1140) covers these topics in more depth, allowing students to deepen their understanding and experience.

Learning Outcomes

Upon successful completion, students will have the knowledge and skills to:

1. Apply fundamental programming concepts, using an object-oriented programming language, to solve practical programming problems
2. Implement, debug, and evaluate algorithms for solving substantial problems; implement an abstract data type
3. Apply basic algorithmic analysis to simple algorithms; use appropriate algorithmic approaches to solve problems
4. Design, implement, and test data structures and code
5. Present, explain, evaluate, and defend choices in design and implementations of programs and algorithms
6. Understand their ethical responsibilities as a programmer with respect to Academic integrity, the use of Artificial Intelligence and authorship of code.