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Outline§ Basic computer architecture

§ Programs and algorithms

§ Bash scripts

§ Text editors

§ Exercise 4: scratch and scripting

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Computers: processing and storage

Hard drive/solid-state drive: non-volatile data storage and retrieval (space measured in GB or TB).

Processor (CPU): perform computational tasks (speed measured in GHz).

Core: an independent processor.

Memory/RAM: temporary volatile storage of data (space measured in GB).

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Programs and algorithms

§ Program§ A set of instructions telling a computer exactly what to do.

§ Programming language§ A language designed to provide instructions to a computer.§ Each language has specific syntax and semantics.

§ Script§ A program, often relatively short and usually written in an interpreted

language.

§ Algorithm§ A sequence of operations to be followed to solve a problem (independent of

a specific programming language).

§ Program

Text editors are used to write computer programs§ Text editors

§ Software for editing plain text files.

§ Used for editing configuration files, writing computer programs and scripts, etc.

§ Word processing software, such as Word and TextEdit, use formatted text as

opposed to plain text and can’t be used for writing scripts.

Mac Users: TextWrangler

PC Users: Notepad++

Linux users: gedit

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Text editors

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Syntax highlighting

Line

num

bers

File type Line breaks Word count

Bash scripts typically have .sh extension

Exercise 4:

§ Scratch and computer programming concepts.

§ Introduction to scripting.

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