Chauvinists

http://chauvinists.wordpress.com/

The chauvinISTs include Bernard Soon, Nancy Woo, Willy Wang, Isabelle James and Lily the Deathstarer.

I thought the blog was very well set out with a great background. I also thought it had very good font styles. An overall mark of 5 out of 5 stars is what I award a fantastic effort. I thought they used nice vibrant colours but they could have stayed with the same font.

The blog is very easy to navigate as it shows all its documents on one page. I however thought that they should have had links to all the documents so you can go straight to the page you want. I award their effort 5 out of 5 stars.

 The blogs answers were impeccable in every way and i have no complaints about their content out of the top mark of 10 I award them full marks. I thought it was very well done and they had done a great job of keeping perfectly updated.

They  did a great job of keeping their work updated and in order. Their combined efforts I award 20 out of 20. I thought they should have had more vibrant colours and easier navigation.

Great job chauvinISTs!!!

DEBAYU MUKHERJEE (DA BOMB)

Debuggin’!

Debugging is the finding and fixing and defects with a computer program. There are 3 different types of errors syntax, logical and runtime. Each of them are caused by different scenarios. The computer displays different error messages in order to alert the programmer of what kind of error the program has.

 Syntax error is to an error in the syntax of a sequence of characters or tokens that is intended to be written in a particular programming  language. If a syntax error occurs when the program is running it must be corrected. A syntax error happens in a calculator as well when you input invalid equations such as (9-=-=) would display syntax errors.

Logic error is when a program operates differently to how it is meant to. For example if the wording of a program is not correct then the program may do something differrent to what it is supposed to do. These are more hard to fix than syntax error as, if your understanding is incorrect then it will be harder to fix the program.

 Runtime error is when the logic and syntax of the program is fine but the computer malfunctions and displays an error. For example if a program asks for a certain amount of space and it cannot be provided then the program malfunctions and displays a run tme error.

 Errors in computer programming happen all the time. To help us identify and resolve problems the computer displays different error messages for the different errors it experiences.

Dec 7 Q4: Documentation

December 6, 2007

1. What is intrinsic documentation?
2. In programming, what are comments? What is their purpose?
3. Write up a list of pros and cons for writing documentation for computer programs.

1. What is intrinsic documentation?
Intrinsic documentation is the use of variables to rename objects in a code. This involves highlighting the parts of a code actually affecting  the function. Another form of intrinsic documentation is by highlighting text in a code without affecting it. Many troubleshooting software utilises this, It highlights errors in code, but does not alter or change what happens.

2. In programming, what are comments? What is their purpose?
Comments are strings of text that do not affect the code but rather are there just to explain or remind people what thats particular piece of code does. Comments are another example of documentation.

3.Write up a list of pros and cons for writing documentation for computer programs.

Pros;

It helps people understand complex bits of code.

It allows people to pinpoint problems in the code.

It can save time when trying to figure out what each bit of code does.

Cons;

It can get time consuming especially with long complex coding.

Documentation may have issues with other parts.

Makes the code longer.

JosephRamilo

Data Operators

Data Operators ~ Joseph RamiloFor each of the following, describe its function, give an example of one and explain how it might be used in a program.

1. Relational operators
2. Logical operators
3. Arithmetic operators

1. Relational Operators

Relational operators is a computer language that tests  two points in a relationship. They usually result in “True” or “False”, depending on whether the strict relationship between the two operands holds or not. Relational operators are also used in technical literature instead of words.eg. Java

2. Logical OperatorsLogical operators are constants that represent a syntactic process in a sentence. Logical operators offer a compound sentence from one or two other sentences. Logical operators can be seen as a utility which when applied to sentences as arguments whose values are “True” or “False” returns in turn the value “True” or “False”.eg. Truth tables

3. Arithmetic OperatorsArithmetic operators are used to do many of the familiar operations that involve calculation of numerals represented by literals, constants, variables, and other expressions.eg. Javascript

Language Levels

Questions: 

1. Give definitions of machine specific language and assembly language.
2. Machine specific and assembly languages are called lower level languages, whilst languages like Visual Basic and C are called higher level languages. What does this mean? What is the difference?
3. Find out what a compiler is. Have you ever used a compiler before? Where?

Answers:

1) 

Machine specific language is the lowest level of language that a computer can understand. The computer processes high-level languages (e.g. BASIC) into machine language before executing a command. Machine language is written in binary form so that a computer can perform it straight away. It is simply the language use by computers made up of 1’s and 0’s.

Assembly language (like Machine Language) is also a language that is proccesed by computers. It is a low-level language used in writing computer programs. However unlike Machine Language which uses binary it uses mnemonics which is easier as mnemonics are codes which uses letters. These are usually easier to remember as they are less confusing which helps the programmer to use this type of code.  

2) 

Programming language is the artificial language humans use to instruct machines what to do. High-level and low-level languages are both programming languages.

High-level programming language:

High-level programming language is more complex, easier to use, adaptable to different programs and can be developed much faster compared to low-level programming language. The reason it’s called high-level is because it is more different from machine language than low-level language  

Low-level programming language:

Low-level programming language’s main advantage is that the finished product is much more efficient than a high-level programming languages. Low-level programming language is very similar to machine language so it is “low-level” because “high level” means it is very different to machine language. 

3) A Compiler is a computer program used to translate high-level computer language into a low-level computer language (assembly or machine language form). Compilers preform many operations including:

• lexical analysis – converting characters into tokens

• parsing – analyses the tokens and make it suitable for later processing

• preprocessing – processing an input data for one program to an input data for another program

• semantic analysis – checks for errors in the code and modifies it if their are any

• code generation - transforms some internal code so that it can be excecuted by a machine

• code optimization - modifys the code to make it more efficient and use less resources

I don’t remember ever using a compiler before.

Note: A decompiler does the opposite it translates low-level language into high-level language.

Binary 101

Answer must be ≥150 words.What does binary mean? (Give an example to explain
Explain the process of how to convert an 8-digit binary number into a decimal number, and give an example of how this works.

My definition of  Binary is a two digit number systemBinary Code: binary code is a series of 1’s and 0’s each called a bit. It is used in computers8 bits = 1 byte and 1024 bytes in a kilobyteExample of something binary:  a biplaneTo convert binary to decimal we use the numbers according to powers acsending from two. We read it from left to right.
Eg. 10100101 in decimal is;
27+0+25+0+0+22+0+21
=128+0+32+0+0+4+1
=165

Algorithms

Q1) An algorithm is a series of well-defined instructions used to complete, solve, intitate or end a problem or task. For example an algorithm for brushings one’s teeth would be

1) Put Toothpaste on brush

 2) Insert brush in mouth

3) Move brush up  then down on the teeth while moving the brush around the mouth while touching the teeth.

4) Take out brush and put under water.

5) Spit out the toothpaste

6) Put water in a glass then put water in mouth

7) Swirl water around inside the mouth

Spit water out of the mouth

9) Wipe mouth on towel

10) End program

Q2) A pseudocode is a set of informal  and compact description to execute a program. It may include if and else in order to determine the situation. For example to determine if a password is correct or not a program such as the following maybe used

If password = input then let through

Else Reject and display rejection

This is helpful for the programmers as it is a quick way of writing a complex algorithm. There are also other advantages such as if a program does not work a programmer has to sift through less algorithms to find errors.

An effective way of displaying a program is by drawing a quick data path. To solve, create, or resolve a problem a data path shows yes and no to show the outcome of a program

Debayu Mukherjee       

Linguistic Diversity

1. List as many different programming languages that you can find out about. Give descriptions of 3 of them and how they are unique.
2. What do the terms procedural and object-oriented mean when referring to programming languages?

Question 1 

Lists of Programming Languages

• HTML ~ HTML stands for Hypertext Markup Language and is the main type of language people use when it comes to producing webpages. It is probably one of easiest language to use when it comes to creating a webpage because the language use is very similar to what you want, e.g. a line break is <br> and bolding a font is <b></b>. The language has a lot of functions but most of them are pretty basic making beginners able to use it.
• Java ~ Java is a very sophisticated type of programming language. The source code for Java are categorized under a format called bytecode. The unique think about Java is that most computers can read Java languages.
• PHP ~ PHP is a programming language used to produce and create dynamic web pages. What makes PHP unique is that the coding can be embedded into HTML as well. It is generally use as a filter.

Question 2 

Procedural ~ The programmer or developer specifies exactly the sequence of steps that the computer must follow in the programming.

Object-oriented ~ Object oriented is the graphics use for making logos, line drawings and other images where smooth edges are required. In order to do this, mathematical processes are needed such as proper steps to draw curves and segments.

I will find the answer to questions as soon as possible

DaTa StUcTuReS

A computer file is a block of arbitrary information, or resource for storing information, which is available to a computer program and is usually based on some kind of durable storage. A file is durable in the sense that it remains available for programs to use after the current program has finished. Computer files can be considered as the modern counterpart of paper documents which traditionally were kept in offices’ and libraries’ files, which are the source of the term.

In computer science an array is a data structure consisting of a group of elements that are accessed by indexing. In most programming languages each element has the same data type and the array occupies a contiguous area of storage. Most programming languages have a built-in array data type.

Some programming languages support array programming  which generalises operations and functions to work transparently over arrays as they do with scalars, instead of requiring looping over array members.

Multi-dimensional arrays are accessed using more than one index: one for each dimension.

Arrays can be classified as fixed-sized arrays  whose size cannot change once their storage has been allocated, or dynamic arrays, which can be resized.

07/12/2007 Tasks

Here are quick links to the questions for today’s lesson.

1. Language Levels Sean Yap
2. Data Structures Gerry Shen
3. Errors Debayu Mukherjee
4. Documentation Joseph Ramilo
5. Linguistic Diversity Michael Tran

Make sure you post your answers onto the links as well. Your Happy coordinator, Michael.