Powerpoint and audio

For each set of slides, work through the slides first -->

Then, if you want to follow up some of the themes, there's further info to the side of them, as there is for these slides, below. Skim-read these sections at least, because occasionally there's important stuff to do, but with most of it you can either read the linked material in your own time, or ignore it, as you like. We'll let you know if it's important.

-----------------------------------

Further info:

Becoming a programmer isn't just about knowing how to code, there's a whole culture and history to engage with as well. Part of being a programmer is being able to talk to other programmers in a language they understand so you can work productively together.

With that in mind, this course will also introduce some key ideas in computing more generally. We'll also link to information you can follow up and read in your own time. For example, here's some links on computing you might like to explore...

• Lengthy but pretty good introduction to binary counting (also hexadecimal, which is useful).
• Programming language generations (NB: Java is also a 'high-level' programming language).

Powerpoint and audio

Further info:

Blocks: it is worth noting that blocks are always used with some kind of statement, so you'd actually never see this kind of thing:

public class HelloWorld {
   {
      System.out.println("Hello World");
   }
}


The example of the 'main' block in the slides is more usual, where a block is preceeded by some kind of statement or declaration, in the case of 'main' a declaration that the block is the main block.

public class HelloWorld {
   public static void main (String args[]) {
      System.out.println("Hello World");
   }
}


Note also that you can break lines anywhere except between quote marks, so this is ok:

System.out.println(
   "Hello World");


But this isn't:

System.out.println("Hello
   World");


You'd have to do this:

System.out.println("Hello " +
   "World");