Introduction to Programming

Overview

This unit of study aims to introduce students to structured procedural programming and design.

Unit learning outcomes

Students who successfully complete this unit will be able to:

1. Apply code reading and debugging techniques to analyse, interpret, and describe the purpose of program code, and locate within this code errors in syntax, logic, style and/or good practice (K6, S1)
2. Describe the principles of structured programming, and relate these to the syntactical elements of the programming language used and the way programs are developed (A2, S1)
3. Construct small programs, using the programming languages covered, that include the use of arrays, functions and procedures, parameter passing with call by value and call by reference, custom data types, and pointers (K1, K2, K3, S2)
4. Use modular and functional decomposition to break problems down functionally, represent the resulting structures diagrammatically, and implement these structures in code as functions and procedures (S3, A2, A4)

Teaching methods

Hawthorn

Assessment

(i) An aggregate mark of 50% or more, and (ii) A pass grade for the non-reportable (pass/fail) test. Students who do not successfully achieve hurdle requirements (ii) will receive a maximum of 45% as the total mark for the unit.

Content

• Designing, writing, compiling, documenting, and testing programs
• Programming language syntax
• Structured programming principles
• Functional decomposition