Lecture 01-Java Types, Expressions, and Assignment - CS1110...

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CS1110. Lecture 1, 31 Aug 2010.
Types, expressions, variables, assignment statements
Can’t install DrJava and running a
Microsoft operating system? Contact TA
Prabhjeet Singh, [email protected]
Quote for the day:
Computers in the future may weigh no more than
1.5 tons.
--Popular Mechanics, forecasting the relentless
march of science, 1949
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Orange:
update from
handout

Interlude: Why learn to program?
(which is subtly distinct from, although a core part of, computer science itself)
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From the Economist: “Teach computing, not Word”
http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2010/08/computing_schools
Like philosophy, computing qua computing is worth teaching
less for the subject matter itself and more for the habits of
mind that studying it encourages.
The best way to encourage interest in computing in school is
to ditch the vocational stuff that strangles the subject
currently, give the kids a simple programming language, and
then get out of the way and let them experiment. For some, at
least, it could be the start of a life-long love affair.

Interlude, continued
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That, for me, sums up the seductive intellectual core of
computers and computer programming: here is a magic black
box. You can tell it to do whatever you want, within a certain
set of rules, and it will do it;