College Level Computer Science

This is the course that I wanted to take when I was in High School.

We had so much fun this past year! I am amazed how much we were able to accomplish. We even managed to write a small Theorem Prover and a Hidden Markov Model Solver (!)

This is Unit 1 of a year-long course will take you from the basics of digital logic through the design of a computer and into Object Oriented Programming using Java. The successful student will be ready to take many Junior/Senior level college courses.

The unique aspect of this course is that I emphasize how memory is used by different languages by using diagrams of memory layout—how you can find one piece of information when you know another. (See diagrams in attached file.)

We will use similar diagrams to understand subclassing, how the JVM works, and even a peek into the Unix Operating System and Garbage Collection. We look at how Java compares to C, C++ and Lisp.

Show me your flowcharts and conceal your tables [data structures], and I shall continue to be mystified. Show me your tables, and I won't usually need your flowcharts; they'll be obvious.
--- Fred Brooks.

It is this foundational understanding that allows us to cover so much more material and so much more of the language than is otherwise possible. Because the student understands our computational objectives so clearly, writing it in a Computer Language becomes a “mere” matter of figuring out the syntax.
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We will begin with Boolean logic, extending that to digital hardware, building Flip Flops, Muxes, Adders, etc., ultimately putting together an entire computer. 

With that background, we will look at how memory is used in high-level languages (such as Java) and how the relevant meta-information is encoded. (E.g., How does the runtime system know where a method is located in Java?) 

We will look at the Java runtime system and what it does. (You will emerge thinking that the Java Virtual Machine is the greatest invention in the world and you will be able to expound upon why in detail.)

Then, we will begin writing programs in Java. 

Our grand finale will be a web server.

Your friends will be able to connect their browsers to your web server on your machine and run applications that you wrote.

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This course is an amalgamation of courses I have taught at Stanford and Tufts Universities, along with numerous corporations. Other people have completed the various pieces of this course and left happy. Very few students have dropped out and every student who finished the course completed those programs. 

In other words, if you are excited and into Computer Science, you will succeed. 

During class, we will look at each others’ code and talk about it. Why did you chose those names for the variables? Where do you need (or not need) comments? Is your code easy to understand? Why?

We will be using “Test Driven-Development,” which means that I will provide you with the empty shell of a program and you will write code to pass the tests I’ve written. Thus, you don’t have to deal with many aspects of syntax until you have experience and those aspects become meaningful.

Moreover, should you have one terrible day and make a hash of your code, you will be able to copy mine module for that day and keep going.