An Overview of

Computers and
Programming Languages
Introduction
Without software, the computer is useless
Software is developed with programming languages
◦ C is a programming language (High-Level Programming Language)

C suited for a wide variety of programming tasks

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Elements of a
Computer System
Hardware
◦ CPU
◦ Main memory
◦ Secondary storage
◦ Input/Output devices
Software
 System Software (Such as Operating System, and Device driver)
 Application Software (such as Word processor and games)

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Central Processing Unit
and Main Memory

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The Language of a
Computer
Machine language: language of a
computer; a sequence of 0s and 1s

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Text Representation
ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange)
◦ 128 characters (27)
◦ A is encoded as 1000001 (=65)(66th character)
◦ 3 is encoded as 0110011 (=51)
◦ Extended ASCII (28 = 256 different characters)
Unicode
◦ 65536 characters (characters in other languages)
◦ Two bytes are needed to store a character

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ASCII Table

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The Evolution of Programming
Languages
Early computers were programmed in
machine language
To calculate wages = rate * hours in
machine language (Sequence of 1’s and 0’s):
100100 010001 //Load
100110 010010 //Multiply
100010 010011 //Store

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The Evolution of
Programming
Languages (cont’d.)
Assembly language instructions are mnemonic ( )
‫قابلة للتذكر‬

Assembler: translates a program written in assembly

language into machine language
Using assembly language instructions,
wages = rate • hours
can be written as:
LOAD rate
MULT hour
STOR wages

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The Evolution of
Programming
Languages (cont’d.)
High-level languages include Basic, FORTRAN,
COBOL, Pascal, C, C, C#, and Java
Compiler: translates a program written in a high-
level language into machine language
The equation
wages = rate • hours
can be written in C as:
wages = rate * hours;

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Reasons to learn C

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Applications of C

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Processing a C Program
(cont’d.)

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Processing a C Program
(cont’d.)
To execute a C program:
◦ Use an editor to create a source program in C
◦ Preprocessor directives begin with # and are
processed by the preprocessor
◦ Use the compiler to:
◦ Check that the program obeys the language rules
◦ Translate into machine language (object program)

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Processing a C Program
(cont’d.)
To execute a C program (cont'd.):
◦ Linker:
◦ Combines object program with other programs provided by the SDK to
create executable code
◦ Library: contains prewritten code you can use
◦ Loader:
◦ Loads executable program into main memory
◦ The last step is to execute the program

Some IDEs do all this with a Build or Rebuild

command

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 Programming with the
Problem Analysis–Coding–
Execution Cycle
Algorithm:
◦ Step-by-step problem-solving process
◦ Solution achieved in finite amount of time
Programming is a process of problem solving

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17
18
The Problem Analysis–
Coding–Execution Cycle
(cont’d.)
Thoroughly understand the problem and all requirements
◦ Does program require user interaction?
◦ Does program manipulate data?
◦ What is the output?

If the problem is complex, divide it into subproblems

◦ Analyze and design algorithms for each subproblem

Check the correctness of algorithm

◦ Can test using sample data
◦ Some mathematical analysis might be required

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The Problem Analysis–
Coding–Execution Cycle
(cont’d.)
Once the algorithm is designed and correctness
verified
 Write the equivalent code in high-level language

Enter the program using text editor

Run code through compiler
If compiler generates errors
 Look at code and remove errors
 Run code again through compiler
If there are no syntax errors
 Compiler generates equivalent machine code

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The Problem Analysis–
Coding–Execution Cycle
(cont’d.)
Linker links machine code with system resources
Once compiled and linked, loader can place
program into main memory for execution
The final step is to execute the program
Compiler guarantees that the program follows the
rules of the language
◦ Does not guarantee that the program will run correctly

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Example
Design an algorithm to find the perimeter and area
of a rectangle
The perimeter and area of the rectangle are given
by the following formulas:

perimeter = 2 * (length + width)

area = length * width

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Example (cont’d.)
Algorithm:
◦ Get length of the rectangle
◦ Get width of the rectangle
◦ Find the perimeter using the following equation:

perimeter = 2 * (length + width)

◦ Find the area using the following equation:

area = length * width

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Programming
Methodologies
Two popular approaches to programming
design
◦ Structured
◦ Object-oriented

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Structured
Programming
Structured design:
◦ Dividing a problem into smaller subproblems

Structured programming:
◦ Implementing a structured design

The structured design approach is also called:

◦ Top-down (or bottom-up) design
◦ Stepwise refinement
◦ Modular programming

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Rectangle.c
#include<stdio.h>

int main()
{

float width, length, Perimeter, Area;

printf ("\n Please Enter the Width of a Rectangle : ");

scanf ("%f",&width);

printf ("\n Please Enter the Length of a Rectangle : ");

scanf ("%f",&length);

Perimeter = 2 * (length + width);

Area = length * width;

printf("\n Perimeter of a Rectangle = %.2f", Perimeter);

printf("\n Area of a Rectangle = %.2f", Area);

return 0;

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