CS 101 Introduction to Computing (Autumn 2024)

About This Course

• This is an introductory course on Programming and Computing for first-year undergraduate students of all streams in the B.Tech program at IIT Goa.

• Course Credits: 4

• Lectures: 3 hours a week

• Lab: 3 hours a week

Course Objectives

This course offers a basic introduction to computer programming and computing principles.

• Understand the basic components in computing: Computer Hardware, Software, Data and Storage.

• Learn the fundamentals of computer programming using Python (we will focus on Python3).

• Learn the skill of problem solving by effectively translating problem statements into more precise specifications, formulating an approach, and translating it into a Python program.

• Learn to understand, analyze, critique and debug programs and code that is generated by humans or AI code-generation tools.

• Learn how complex systems can be built using decomposition and abstraction using Python libraries as an example.

Topics

• Basic model of sequential computing: hardware, memory, data, software (sequential instructions)

• Introduction to Python: Datatypes, Variables, Assignment and Basic operations

• Simple programs with input, output and functions

• Flow of control: Branches, conditional expressions, loops, functions

• String objects and operations on strings

• Structured types: Lists, Sets, Dictionaries, Tuples

• Problem Solving with Python: Searching, Sorting, Recursion

• Python Modules and File handling

• Introduction to object-oriented programming: Python Classes

• Exception handling, assertions

• Von-neumann model, basic introduction to the C language

• An introduction and broad overview of topics in Computer Science and Engineering.

People

• Course Instructor: Neha Karanjkar

• Graduate TAs: Tushar Lone, Lekshmi P, Andleeb, Karthik Pai, Harshit Pant

• Undergraduate TAs: Harsh Choudhary, Rohan Manro, Aditya Bawangade, Hasanali Malavi

Lecture and Lab Timings

Lectures: (3 Lectures per-week, 50 minutes each). Location: LH1, First floor, Mining Building

• Mondays 2pm

• Wednesdays 2pm

• Thursdays 4pm

Labs: (1 Lab session per-week, 3 hours) Location: CC Lab, First floor, Main building

• Mondays 10am (for batch 1)

• Tuesdays 10am (for batch 2)

Course Calendar

Tools that will be used in this course:

• PythonTutor (Browser-based compiler and visualizer for understanding basics of Python)

• Google Colab Browser-based Python notebook

• For autograding programming questions: CodeCheck and Moodle CodeRunner.

• For writing and running Python programs:

  • Editor of your choice (Eg. notebook, gedit, vim) and command-line based Python3 interpreter

  • VisualStudio code

• Gen-AI tools that may be introduced in the course: ChatGPT, Github copilot (plugin for VSCode)

Textbook:

• Online, Interactive Textbook: Foundations of Python Programming Link

Resources and Books:

• Introduction to Computation and Programming Using Python, 2nd Edition with Applications to Understanding Data by John V. Guttag. 2016.

• How to Think like a Computer Scientist by Allen B. Downey. 2002.

• How to Think Like a Computer Scientist: Learning with Python 3 by Peter Wentworth, Jeffrey Elkner, Allen B. Downey, and Chris Meyers. 2012. Online book available here.

• MIT open courses material on introductory programming links to courses