Week of Sept. 21 - 25: Beginning to write programs using the Turing programming language

The topic of variables and constants is not difficult, but it's important to learn it well in order to continue with programming.

1. Become familiar with how to declare a variable using var. For example:
   var maxTempDay1 : real
   
2. Know the three data types -- int, real, string.
   
3. Try to think of a variable as a named memory location, that is, an area of RAM the computer gives a name and waits for it to be given a value.
   
   

For a presentation a little different from the Turing textbook, you might look at the tutorial someone has written on Geocities at http://www.geocities.com/turing_site/Tutorials/Tutorial1.htm?20091.

Where to get your copy of Turing

To practise programming at home, you need a copy of the Turing program to install on your home computer. You can download it from here:

schools.tdsb.on.ca/jarvisci/turing/turing.zip

Welcome to the ICS201 course in Computer Studies!

Welcome to your first course in computer science!

I think you're going to enjoy this course. Working in front of a computer is a nice break from your other courses, and there are lots of interesting things to learn.



We'll start the year with a little background information about computers and how they work from the Norton textbook. It's an excellent textbook with many "pictures that say more than a thousand words." It was published a while ago, in 2000, so a few details have gone out of date, but we'll correct those little problems. Overall it's great.

After the introduction, we begin to write computer programs, which I think is going give you quite a thrill. There's something about writing your own programs, having that much control over the computer - it's very cool!

Whether you get a kick out of it at the beginning or not, later in the year I guarantee you're going to enjoy pixel graphics (Chapter 8 of the Turing textbook), where you create colour and animation and all sorts of razzle-dazzle.

So get ready to enjoy, enjoy, ENJOY!