Programming Concepts

# Programming Concepts

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# Contents:

- [New Terms](#terms)
- [Number Systems](#number-systems)
- [Levels of Programming Languages](#levels)

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name: terms

# New Terms

- Bits, Bytes, Transistors
- Numeral Systems: Unary, Binary, Decimal
- Encodings: ASCII, Unicode
- Algorithm
- Pseudocode
- Variables, Loops, Boolean Expressions, Functions
- Abstraction

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# Bit

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# Bit

# .eight[Binary digit. It represents 1 or 0, true or false.]

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# Byte

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# Byte

# .eight[A collection of eight bits, big enough to hold a single character.]

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# Transistor

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# Transistor

# .eight[Physical switch that can hold a Bit of information.]

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# Number System

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# Number System

# .eight[A convention to represent numbers with written symbols, like Binary and Decimal.]

- Binary has 2 symbols: 0 and 1
- Decimal has 10 symbols: 0 through 9
- You'll see others like Octal and Hexadecimal

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# Encoding

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# Encoding

# .eight[A convention to store text as binary data, like ASCII and Unicode.]

- A computer reads binary in memory and translates it into text symbols according to an encoding.
- Unicode replaced ASCII.

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# Algorithm

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# Algorithm

# .eight[Step by step instructions to solve a problem.]

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# Pseudocode

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# Pseudocode

# .eight[Informal notation in regular English that resembles a programming language.]

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# Abstraction

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# Abstraction

# .eight[Hiding unnecessary details to focus on higher level ideas.]

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name: number-systems

# Number Systems

Why are they important?

- It's important to realize that "meaning" and "symbols" are different.
- If computers only understand electricity and not electricity, we have to translate our meaning appropriately.

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# Counting in Decimal

- 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9
- crap. we ran out of symbols...
- let's remember that we made it to .eight[ten] once
- .eight[1]0, .eight[1]1, .eight[1]2, etc.

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# Counting in Decimal

- 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9
- crap. we ran out of symbols...
- let's remember that we made it to .eight[ten] once
- .eight[1]0, .eight[1]1, .eight[1]2, etc.
- let's remember that we made it to .eleven[hundred] once
- .eleven[1]00, .eleven[1]01, .eleven[1]02, etc.

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# Counting in Binary

- 0, 1
- crap. we ran out of symbols...
- let's remember that we made it to .eight[two] once
- .eight[1]0, .eight[1]1
- we made it to .eleven[four] once
- .eleven[1]00, .eleven[1]01, .eleven[1]10, etc.

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# .fourteen[Practice]

Try To Convert These To Binary:

- 4
- 7
- 12
- 25
- 44
- 255

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# .fourteen[Practice]

Try To Convert These To Decimal:

- 0011
- 0101
- 1100
- 0010 0001
- 0101 1101

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name: levels

# Levels of Programming Languages

- Binary is the lowest level
- Languages like C or JavaScript are on a higher level
- This is .eight[abstraction], hiding away details

[Wikipedia: Low-Level Programming Language](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-level_programming_language)

[Wikipedia: High-Level Programming Language](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-level_programming_language)

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# Levels of Programming Languages

Really, there are a lot of levels:

- JavaScript
- C
- Assembly
- Machine Code
- Hardware

Each higher level is translated, or .eight[compiled] into a language below until the machine can use it.

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# Levels of Programming Languages

We'll start with a higher level language:

- It's closer to natural languages like English
- We can hide the difficult details at first