Learning Computer Science through
learning to program in C
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Computer Science is more than just programming.
- it's a discipline.
- it includes theory and hardware.
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Programming is more than just learning how to use C.
- Programming is a general skill that involves reducing behavioral
rules to executable statements.
- C is just one of many programming languages, each of which is
well suited for certain kinds of applications.
-
Programming is at the core of Computer Science.
- It's what is special about Computer Science
-
C is currently a reasonable way to learn how to program.
- It is widely used and important.
- It supports most of the key concepts you will need to learn.
- It has constructs at both a high-level and those "close to the
machine".
-
C is not the best choice
- But there is no best choice.
- C is often described, with a mixture of fondness and disdain varying
according to the speaker, as
"a language that combines all the
elegance and power of assembly language with all the readability and
maintainability of assembly language"
- Later you will learn C++, Java, Lisp and probably several other
programming languages, like Perl, Python, and Basic.
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