Lecture 1

Welcome to MUH101

Burkay Genç, Ahmet Selman Bozkır, and Selma Dilek

01/03/2023

Subject : Learn Python a programming language
Classes :
- All classes are online until further notice
- All off-class communication will be on hadi
  - hadi website
  - You have to follow hadi daily for new announcements

Grading
- 60%: Midterm (2x)
  - Midterms format will be announced during the semester
- 40%: Final Exam (1x)

Cooperation
- you may cooperate with your friends to understand the course material
- all exam work needs to be individual
  - cheaters will be harshly penalized -> -100, F3, disciplinary committee

Position yourself to succeed!
- do practice early
- do not skip lectures
New to programming? PRACTICE. PRACTICE? PRACTICE!
- can’t passively absorb programming as a skill
- download code before lecture and follow along
- don’t be afraid to try out Python commands!

You can download your own copy, it is free
- Download Python recommended
More advanced tasks (data science, machine learning)
- Download Anaconda
- Not recommended at this level
You can use online compilers/IDEs
- Google Colab recommended will be used in course
- Jupyter Notebook recommended
- Python Fiddle
- PyFiddle
- Programiz
Use a Linux distribution such as Ubuntu, Manjaro etc.
- Python comes built in

What is an IDE?
- An Integrated Development Environment allows you to write programs in a programming language and provides extra tools to help the process
  - Syntax highlighting
  - Code completion
  - Bracket completion/matching
  - Debugging
  - Profiling
  - more…
PyCharm is a very powerful and popular IDE for Python
IDLE comes built-in with any Python distribution
Eric, Spyder, Eclipse+PyDev
Sublime Text, VS Code, Atom, etc. are generic editors that can be extended with Python capabilities

Fundamentally:
- performs calculations
  a billion calculations per second!
- remembers results
  100s of gigabytes of storage!
What kinds of calculations?
- built-in to the language
- ones that you define as the programmer
computers only know what you tell them

declarative knowledge is statements of fact.
- someone will win a Trophy before class ends
imperative knowledge is a recipe or “how-to”.
1. Students sign up for lottery
2. Burkay opens his IDE
3. Burkay chooses a random number between 1^st and n^th responder
4. Burkay finds the number in the responders sheet. Winner!

square root of a number $x$ is $y$ such that $y*y = x$
recipe for deducing square root of a number $x$
1. Start with a guess, $g$
2. If $g*g$ is close enough to $x$ , stop and say $g$ is the answer
3. Otherwise make a new guess by averaging $g$ and $x/g$
4. Using the new guess, repeat process until close enough

$g$	$g*g$	$x/g$	$(g+x/g)/2$
3	9	16/3	4.17
4.17	17.36	3.837	4.0035
4.0035	16.0277	3.997	4.000002

1 + 2 + 3 = an algorithm!

Basic machine architecture

sequence of instructions stored inside computer
- built from predefined set of primitive instructions
  - arithmetic and logic
  - simple tests
  - moving data
special program (interpreter) executes each instruction in order
- use tests to change flow of control through sequence
- stop when done

Turing showed that you can compute anything using 6 primitives
modern programming languages have more convenient set of primitives
we can also create new primitives
anything computable in one language is computable in any other programming language
- Python == Java == C == Pascal == C++ == C#
- They only differ in ease of doing something

a programming language provides a set of primitive constructs
- 2, 4.8, ‘a’, “burkay”, TRUE, +, -, *, …
expressions are complex but legal combinations of primitives in a programming language
- 2 + 4.7
- TRUE && FALSE
- 3.0 + 2 / 5.4
expressions and computations have values and meanings in a programming language

primitive constructs
- English: words
- programming language: numbers, strings, simple operators