Every day, computers and algorithms touch the lives of everyone around us in both mundane and profound ways. These algorithms are in the plants and distribution systems that bring you clean water and electricity, sensors that moderate the flow of traffic, in the tractors and combines that sow and harvest our food, and in the satellites that measure and predict the weather trends. If you are curious about what computers can do and how we instruct them to do those things - this course is for you. No prior programming experience is needed for this course.

In addition to exposure to programming, you will gain a powerful set of thinking and problem-solving skills that you can use in your daily life. Start taking advantage of the power of computers around us to make our world a better place.

What you’ll learn

• Demonstrate problem solving techniques for programming.
• Develop algorithms to solve problems. Demonstrate effective troubleshooting, testing, and debugging of programs.
• Describe and apply variables, basic and composite data types, and collections to the development of programs.
• Develop programs using fundamental structures of sequence, selection, and iteration.
• Write functions that accept parameters and return results.
• Implement object-oriented programs.
• Describe the importance and relevance of computing and programming skills in our lives and careers.

What to expect in class

Video lectures, readings, skill challenges, project challenges, discussions, live meetings with the instructor, and midterm and final exams.

Exams and grading

• 10% - Skill Challenges (5)
• 40% - Project Challenges (11)
• 20% - Midterm Exam
• 30% - Final Exam