Study Topics for Midterm Exam

• Syllabus
  • goals
  • late policy
  • plagiarism policy
• Introduction
  • model of a machine - CPU, RAM, storage
  • properties of RAM, secondary storage
  • units - KB, MB, GB, TB, etc.
  • Guido van Rossum's contribution
  • programming languages
    • machine language
    • high level language
  • designing problem solutions
  • pseudocode
  • algorithm - a set of steps for solving a problem
  • testing - test cases, plans - regression testing
  • IDE and its components
  • compiler vs. interpreter
  • syntax and semantics (logic)
  • Documentation - comments, prolog: purpose, pre- and post-conditions
  • Kinds of errors
    • syntax
    • semantics
    • runtime
• Variables and Expressions
  • variables
    • properties and which ones can change
    • languages that are dynamically typed "weakly" versus staticly typed "strongly"
  • assignment statement
    • how it operates, precisely (right side, left side, ...)
    • Also how the augmented assignment operators work (+=, -=, *=, /=, etc.)
  • reserved words - keywords
  • identifiers
    • syntax rules - how to make identifiers
    • case sensitive
  • arithmetic operators
    • precedence of operators
    • division operator- floor (//) versus floating point (/)
    • remainder mod "%"
    • ** exponentiation - right associative
    • mixed type expressions
    • the type each operator returns
  • input - what is its argument (prompt), what type does it return, what happens when it is executed
  • structure of a Python program
  • main function header - "def main ():"
  • printing to space horizontally and vertically on the shell window
  • how do end= and sep= work?
  • How does the .format method work?
• Data Types
  • how to tell the difference
  • what do the constants of each type look like?
  • kinds
    • string, double quotes vs. single quotes vs. triple quotes
    • escaped characters
    • integer
    • float - exponential (scientific) notation, mantissa+exponent
    • type casting
• Pre-written functions
  • import statements - 3 forms of it
  • math library
  • how to call them
• Structured Programming
  • control structure versus data structure
  • four kinds of control structures
  • general guarantee for all control structures (One entrance, One exit)
  • sequence
    • what is it?
    • guarantees - executed in order, started at first step, ended at last step
  • selection
    • what is it?
    • guarantees
      • entrance at condition,
      • one branch or the other executed,
      • never both branches at the same time
      • after exit of either branch, continues at same point
    • dead code - don't do it! logically impossible to execute
  • iteration
    • what is it?
    • guarantees - entrance at condition, exit only from condition at top
    • infinite loop - don't do it!
  • module (function)
    • what is it?
    • guarantees - entrance at top of definition, exit at bottom, returns to point it was called from
    • can have dead code too! NO code after return statement!
• Loops
  • for loops
  • an accumulator statement - how it works
  • the range function
    • three forms with 1, 2, or 3 arguments
• Operators and builtin functions
  • Whenever you see a new operator or a new function, ask yourself these questions
    • what is its semantics? or what does it DO? what do its arguments mean?
    • how many operands or arguments does it have? what type?
    • what type (or types) does it return? or does it return None?
• Branching (Conditionals)
  • bool constants - True, False
  • relational operators <, >, etc.
  • logical operators - and, or, not
    • precedence with all other operators
    • truth tables - how do the operators work?
  • DeMorgan's laws
  • contradictions and tautologies
  • if statements
  • nested if statements
    • which if does the else go with?
  • if - elif statements
  • abbreviated if statements - ones that look like "if gold:"
  • open and closed selections
  • tracing ifs
  • comparing floats
  • comparing strings - ASCII ordering
  • What does ASCII stand for?
  • testing if's