CS101
Introduction to Programming
CS101
Spring 2012
Lecture #1
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CS101
Welcome to CS101!
Welcome to Introduction to Programming!
CS101:
• 12 sections
• 6 lecturers
• 6 lead TAs
• 36 helper TAs
Each section has one 3-hour lab per week. This is the most
important part of the course!
Two sections together have a lecture once a week:
• Mon. Sections A, B by Y.J. Lee; C, D by Moonzoo Kim;
• Wed. Sections E, F by Yu-Wing Tai; G, H by Ho-Jin Choi;
• Fri. Sections I, J by Taisook Han; K, L by Dong-Soo Han.
You must regularly check the course announcements on
[Link]
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Grading
Practice points:
• 100 points for lecture attendance;
• 100 points for lab work;
• 200 points for homework.
Students need to collect at least 320 practice points.
Definitely NO BONUS Homework!
Theory points:
• 100 points for midterm exam;
• 100 points for final exam.
The grade is determined by the theory points only.
The practice points over 320 are ONLY qualification for
grading.
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Credit Transfer
Only by pass exam
• No credit transfer possible from other universities
Registration
• 2012.2.6. - 2.8
Pass Exam
• Time: 2012.2.13.(Monday) 8pm-11pm
• Location: Creative Learning Building Rm #307
• Language: Python
• Pass if above B-
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Section Change/New Registration
Freshmen entering KAIST in 2012
• No section change is allowed.
New Registration
• Through online: KAIPA ([Link]
• First Come First Serve
• Class size is limited to 45 students.
• 2012.2.6. - 2.17
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Attendance
No attendance check in the first lecture.
When you come to the 2nd lecture
• Pick a seat and it will be your seat for the rest of the
semester
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Honesty policy
Cheating is strongly forbidden.
Cheating on homework or exams will give an F.
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Course material
All course related materials will be made available on the
course website.
• Lecture slides and example code
• Lecture notes on robot programming and photo processing
• Lab material
• [Link]
Main reference
Practical Programming: An Introduction
to Computer Science Using Python by
Jennifer Campbell, Paul Gries, Jason
Montojo, and Greg Wilson. Pragmatic
Programmers, 2009.
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Python
This course is about programming and computational thinking,
not about learning a programming language.
Python is a programming language that is easy to learn and
very powerful.
• Used in many universities for introductory courses.
• Main language used for web programming at Google.
• Widely used in scientific computation, for instance at
NASA, by mathematicians and physicists.
• Available on embedded platforms, for instance Nokia
mobile phones.
• Large portions of games (such as Civilization IV) are
written in Python.
Once you learnt programming in one language, it is relatively
easy to learn another language, such as C++ or Java.
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Why are you here?
Every scientist and engineer must know some programming. It
is part of basic education, like calculus, linear algebra,
introductory physics and chemistry, or English.
Alan Perlis 1961
Computer science is not computer programming. We teach
programming to teach computational thinking:
• Solving problems (with a computer).
• Thinking on multiple levels of abstraction.
Decompose a problem into smaller problems.
• A way of human thinking (not “thinking like a computer”)
• Thinking about recipes (algorithms).
30 years ago the solution to a problem in science or
engineering was usually a formula. Today it is usually an
algorithm (DNA, proteins, chemical reactions, factory
planning, logistics).
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What is a program?
A program is a sequence of instructions that solves some
problem (or achieves some effect).
For instance: Call your friend on the phone and give her
instructions to find your favorite café. Or explain how to bake
a cake.
Instructions are operations that the computer can already
perform.
But we can define new instructions and raise the level of
abstraction!
A program implements an algorithm (a recipe for solving a
problem).
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What is debugging?
A bug is a mistake in a program. Debugging means to find the
mistake and to fix it.
Computer programs are very complex systems. Debugging is
similar to an experimental science: You experiment, form
hypotheses, and verify them by modifying your program.
Kinds of errors:
• Syntax error. Python cannot understand your program, and
refuses to execute it.
• Runtime error. When executing your program (at runtime),
your program suddenly terminates with an error message.
• Semantic error. Your program runs without error messages,
but does not do what it is supposed to do.
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Why is programming useful?
• 20 years ago, electrical engineering students learnt about
circuits. Today they learn about embedded systems.
• You can build a radio in software.
• Industrial engineers program industrial robots. Moreover,
today’s industrial engineers work on logistics—problems that
can only be solved by computer.
• Modern automobiles contain thousands of lines of code, and
would not run without microprocessors.
• Mathematicians gain insight and intuition by experimenting with
mathematical structures, even for discrete objects such as
groups and graphs.
• Experimental data often needs to be reformatted to be analyzed
or reused in different software. Python is fantastic for this
purpose.
• Experimental data sets are nowadays too large to be handled
manually.
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Why learn programming?
• If you can only use software that someone else made for
you, you limit your ability to achieve what you want.
• For instance, digital media is manipulated by software. If
you can only use Photoshop, you limit your ability to
express yourself.
• Programming gives you freedom.
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Why is programming fun?
Programming is a creative process.
A single person can actually build a software system of the
complexity of the space shuttle hardware. Nothing similar is
true in any other discipline.
There is a large and active open-source community: people
who write software in their free time for fun, and distribute it
for free on the internet. For virtually any application there is
code available that you can download and modify freely.
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Let’s get started
But now let me show you some Python code. . .
• interactive Python
• Python programs (scripts)
• comments
• your own instructions: functions
• keywords
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Adding new functions
A function definition specifies the name of a new function and
the sequence of statements that execute when the function is
called.
def print_message():
print "CS101 is fantastic!"
print "Programming is fun!"
You can call a function inside another function:
def repeat_message():
print_message()
print_message()
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Flow of execution
def print_message():
print "CS101 is fantastic!"
print "Programming is so much fun!"
def repeat_message():
function definitions
print_message()
print_message()
repeat_message() function calls
Execution begins at the first statement. Statements are
executed one-by-one, top to bottom.
Function definitions do not change the flow of execution—but
only define a function.
Function calls are like detours in the flow of execution.
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Robots
# create a robot with one beeper
hubo = Robot(beepers = 1)
# move one step forward
[Link]()
dot notation
# turn left 90 degrees
hubo.turn_left()
How can hubo turn right?
def turn_right(): Define a function!
hubo.turn_left()
hubo.turn_left()
hubo.turn_left()
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Newspaper delivery
Hubo should climb the stairs to the front door, drop a
newspaper there, and return to his starting point.
Problem outline: Python version:
• Climb up four stairs climb_up_four_stairs()
• Drop the newspaper hubo.drop_beeper()
• Turn around turn_around()
• Climb down four stairs climb_down_four_stairs()
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Implementing the steps
def turn_around():
hubo.turn_left()
hubo.turn_left()
def climb_up_four_stairs():
climb_up_one_stair()
climb_up_one_stair()
climb_up_one_stair()
climb_up_one_stair()
def climb_up_one_stair():
hubo.turn_left()
[Link]()
turn_right()
[Link]()
[Link]()
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Top-down design
Start at the top of the problem, and make an outline of a
solution.
For each step of this solution, either write code directly, or
outline a solution for this step.
When all the partial problems have become so small that we
can solve them directly, we are done and the program is
finished.
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Simple repetitions
To repeat the same instruction 4 times:
for i in range(4): for-loop
print "CS101 is fantastic!"
Don’t forget the indentation!
What is the difference:
for i in range(4):
print "CS101 is great!"
print "I love programming!"
and
for i in range(4):
print "CS101 is great!"
print "I love programming!"
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Avoiding repetitions
def climb_up_four_stairs():
climb_up_one_stair()
climb_up_one_stair()
climb_up_one_stair()
climb_up_one_stair()
We should avoid writing the same code repeatedly. A for-loop
allows us to write this more elegantly:
def climb_up_four_stairs():
for i in range(4):
climb_up_one_stair()
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