Programming: an introduction to the profession. In three volumes. Vol.1: Basics of programming.

The book is aimed at people who learn programming on their own; it considers a wide range of issues, including introductory information, basic concepts and techniques of programming, the capabilities of the operating system kernel and the principles of its functioning, programming paradigms. It is supposed to use operating systems of the Unix family (including Linux) as an end-to-end working and training environment; a number of programming languages are considered: Pascal, assembly language (NASM), C, C++, Lisp, Scheme, Prolog, Hope and Tcl. The book includes information about the most important Unix system calls, including those for communication over computer networks; an introducton to the ncurses, FLTK and Tcl/Tk libraries is also given. The first volume ("Basics of Programming") includes the introductory part, which contains some historical stuff, basics of the general computer architecture and some mathematics closely related to computer science; the second part, in which the very basics of computer program creation are explained using the Pascal language; and the third part devoted to assembly language programming.

A Case Study of Using Edmodo to Enhance Computer Science Learning for Engineering Students

Edmodo is becoming increasingly used in higher education. It helps teachers to easily share learning content with students, and communicate with them better. Several studies demonstrate its effectiveness in improving students’ results and satisfaction with the learning process. In this paper, we describe our experience using Edmodo for courses in computer sciences designed for engineering students. We tested Edmodo in three courses delivered in a blended learning mode: the assembly language programming, the operating systems, and the PHP language programming. The learning scenario adopted for these courses was already presented in our previous work on the pedagogy of integration. Results show that the use of Edmodo within the pedagogy of integration enhances both learning and teaching experiences.

Stepping Stones to Inductive Synthesis of Low-Level Looping Programs

Inductive program synthesis, from input/output examples, can provide an opportunity to automatically create programs from scratch without presupposing the algorithmic form of the solution. For induction of general programs with loops (as opposed to loop-free programs, or synthesis for domain-specific languages), the state of the art is at the level of introductory programming assignments. Most problems that require algorithmic subtlety, such as fast sorting, have remained out of reach without the benefit of significant problem-specific background knowledge. A key challenge is to identify cues that are available to guide search towards correct looping programs. We present MAKESPEARE, a simple delayed-acceptance hillclimbing method that synthesizes low-level looping programs from input/output examples. During search, delayed acceptance bypasses small gains to identify significantly-improved stepping stone programs that tend to generalize and enable further progress. The method performs well on a set of established benchmarks, and succeeds on the previously unsolved “Collatz Numbers” program synthesis problem. Additional benchmarks include the problem of rapidly sorting integer arrays, in which we observe the emergence of comb sort (a Shell sort variant that is empirically fast). MAKESPEARE has also synthesized a record-setting program on one of the puzzles from the TIS100 assembly language programming game.