A History of Computing
- Describe the machine, designed over a hundred
years ago, considered to be the first computer
- Discuss historical currents
that led to the development of modern computers
- Describe the explosive
growth of computers during the last three decades
- Provide you with an
opportunity to develop your surfing skills using a browser program and
the World Wide Web
Local Applications
- Describe four common "microworlds" and their realizations
as modern software applications
- Briefly inventory computer applications in
business, technology, the professions, and entertainment
- Develop (or demonstrate)
your skills with a word processor, a spreadsheet program, a graphics processor,
and some other more specialized programs.
Global Applications
- Explore
the historical background and technology of the Internet
- Extend your notion
of a computer application to global, connected, multi-user applications common
to the WWW
- Discuss some of the important applications of the Internet, including
electronic mail, news groups,
and the WWW
- Encourage you to use these applications in conventional ways
- Consider consequences and implicationis of the ever-more pervasive uses
of the WWW
Designing For Use
- Examine the evolution of the user interface
- Discuss
the desirable features of a user interface
- Explore the composition of a WWW
page as an example of an interface.
- Illustrate how completed systems are constructed
by using the HyperText Markup Language (HTML) to design some sample pages
- Use
the techniques illustrated in our sample pages to develop your own home page
Cordon Bleu Programming
- Examine how HTML links, forms, and image
maps support interactive interfaces
- Illustrate the structure of JavaScript
programs, and show how they are described in an HTML document
- Review the
JavaScript code that implements a simple adventure game to see the range of statements
and data types that can be represented in JavaScript
- Show you how to write,
test, and debug JavaScript functions of your own
- Describe the programming
process in general, life cycle terms
Program Translation
- Introduce
the binary representation of information used by modern computers
- Show how
program statements can be translated into machine language using parse trees
- Introduce
several contemporary high-level languages, concentrating on how they make the
programming process more efficient
- Take a brief look at the problems involved
in translating high-level languages into executable instructions
Hardware
- Explain why computers only understand binary languages
- Show how the circuits
of a computer are constructed
- Discuss the hierarchical complexity of computer
hardware
- See how simple circuits, combined in complex ways, can implement
a model computer
- Explore the design of a small but complete microprocessor
Theory of Computation
- Concentrate on the view of a program as an
abstract machine
- Consider two ways of looking at abstract machines
- Investigate and experiment with a variety of Turing Machines
- Describe
the expressive power and the limitations of Turing Machines
Artificial Intelligence
- Discuss intelligence embodied in a machine, and consider Alan Turing's operational
test for machine intelligence
- Look at some major directions in Artificial
Intelligence research
- Experiment with two programs that perform human tasks
- Compare the output of some AI programs to human behavior.
Computers and Society
- Predict future trends in computer use, and rank these trends in order of
their likelihood
- Discuss possible implications of these trends in social,
economic, and political terms
- Consider the WWW as both a tool and a medium
for participating in new social structures
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© 2003 PWS
Publishing Company, All Rights Reserved.