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Introduction To Computer Science: Ryan Stansifer

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Introduction To Computer Science: Ryan Stansifer

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Introduction to Computer Science

Introduction

Ryan Stansifer

Florida Institute of Technology

Melbourne, Florida USA 32901
http://www.cs.fit.edu/~ryan/

11 April 2021

Computer Science (Introduction) © 11 April 2021 1/1

Overview of Course

• Introduction and Context. What is CS?

• Java review. Data, control constructs, static methods
• Classes. Incorporation, instantiation, inheritance
• Generics. Code reuse
• Program analysis. Steps the program takes
• Data structures. Lists, stacks, queue

Computer Science (Introduction) Preface (Overview) © 11 April 2021 2/1

Course Goals

• Programming
• exciting to translate ideas into reality
• basics are simple, yet programming well is difficult; do not underestimate the
challenge
• delivery high-quality programs on time; be able to express control flow and
design data in Java
• problem solving is hard and difficult to teach
• Computer Science
• Computer Science is not just programming
• It is easy to lose sight of the big picture, so we have a general introduction
• Other (non-programming) topics from time to time: architecture, Monte Carlo
methods, O(N), invariants, and so on

Computer Science (Introduction) Preface (Goals) © 11 April 2021 3/1

Outline of Introduction
There are couple of topics that put programming in context and that are helpful if
pointed out in advance and getting mired in the details.
• What is Computer Science? Areas of study: AI, OS, . . .
• What is a computer? Architecture, CPU, memory hierarchy
• Interface layers: hardware, operating system, application
• The Java platform
• JVM and a million other pieces
• Java history, pragmatics
• Programming languages — not just Java
• Program development; debuggers and so on
• Program style. A program is a text file
• I/O, streams
The single most important skill in programming, computer science, and science in
general is abstraction. Yet I think that belaboring the idea may be too
philosophical at this time. If one is observant, one will see abstraction at work in
all the topics above.
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What is Computer Science?

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What is Computer Science?

computer science. The study of information, protocols and algorithms

for idealized and real automata.

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What is Computer Science?

computer science. The study of information, protocols and algorithms

for idealized and real automata.
• automaton:

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What is Computer Science?

computer science. The study of information, protocols and algorithms

for idealized and real automata.
• automaton: “self moving” – in our context, self “deciding” or autonomous
mechanism with bounded resources (time and space)

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What is Computer Science?

computer science. The study of information, protocols and algorithms

for idealized and real automata.
• automaton: “self moving” – in our context, self “deciding” or autonomous
mechanism with bounded resources (time and space)
• information:

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What is Computer Science?

computer science. The study of information, protocols and algorithms

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What is Computer Science?

computer science. The study of information, protocols and algorithms

Computer Science (Introduction) What is CS? © 11 April 2021 11 / 1

What is Computer Science?

computer science. The study of information, protocols and algorithms

for idealized and real automata.
• automaton: “self moving” – in our context, self “deciding” or autonomous
mechanism with bounded resources (time and space)
• information: knowledge represented in a form suitable for transmission,
manipulation, etc.
• protocol: rules for exchanging information without problems

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What is Computer Science?

computer science. The study of information, protocols and algorithms

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What is Computer Science?

computer science. The study of information, protocols and algorithms

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What is Computer Science?

computer science. The study of information, protocols and algorithms

Computer Science is not the study of computers, nor is it the practice of their use.

Computer Science (Introduction) What is CS? © 11 April 2021 15 / 1

• Arabic:
• Chinese (simplified):
• Dutch: algoritme
• Finnish: algoritmi
• French: algorithme
• German: Algorithmus
• Georgian:
• Hindi:
• Icelandic: reiknirit
• Japanese:
• Latin: algorithmus
• Spanish: algoritmo
• Swedish: algoritm
• Turkish: algoritma

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How does this class (studying Java) fit into the study of Computer
Science?

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How does this class (studying Java) fit into the study of Computer
Science?
Learn some algorithms, some real and idealized machines, learn something about
information. Mostly learn some mechanisms which can express computation.

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Mathematics, science, or engineering?
Mathematics. The science of numbers, interrelations, and abstrac-
tions.
Science. Systematic knowledge or practice. Acquiring knowledge
through the scientific method of natural phenomena (natural sciences) or
human or social behavior (social sciences).
Engineering. The applied science of acquiring and applying knowledge
to design, or construct works for practical purposes.

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What is CS?

• Engineering? Application of science?

• Natural science? Observable phenomena?
• Mathematics? Invisible abstractions?
• Social science? Functioning of human society?

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What is CS?

• Engineering? Application of science?

• Natural science? Observable phenomena?
• Mathematics? Invisible abstractions?
• Social science? Functioning of human society?

CS is exciting and difficult as it is all these things.

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What is CS?

• To do anything requires programming

• To do something useful requires domain knowledge
Do you become skillful at programming, or an expert in some small area?

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Existential Angst

The Scream by the Norwegian artist Edvard Munch, painted in 1893.

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We are at the dawn of new era. The, as yet unfinished, language of computation is
the language of science and engineering and is overtaking mathematics as the
Queen of Science.
Philosophy is written in this grand book, the universe which stands
continually open to our gaze. But the book cannot be understood unless
one first learns to comprehend the language and read the letters in which
it is composed. It is written in the language of mathematics, and its
characters are triangles, circles and other geometric figures without which
it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it; without these,
one wanders about in a dark labyrinth.

Galileo Galilee in The Assayer

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What Does A Computer Scientist Do?

Similar to mathematics, most everyone in modern society uses computing. So

getting a computer science degree prepares you for everything and nothing.

The most visible activity is commanding computers to do our bidding, i.e.,

programming.

What do you want to do?

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Fields
• Computer architecture
• Operating systems
• Programming languages and compilers
• Algorithms, data structures, complexity
• Computability theory
• Numerical analysis
• Networking and distributed computing
• Parallel computing
• Information Management/Database systems
• Software development (aka Software Engineering)
• Human-computer communication/interaction
• Graphics and Visual Computing
• Intelligent Systems (aka Artificial Intelligence)
Computer Science (Introduction) What is CS? (Overview of Fields) © 11 April 2021 26 / 1
Architecture

Basic five-stage pipeline in a RISC machine: instruction fetch, instruction decode,

execute, memory access, register write back.
The IBM PowerPC G5 has 21 pipeline stages; the Intel Pentium 4E has 31 stages.

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Operating Systems — paging

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Programming Languages and Compilers

[Front end of compiler]

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Algorithms and Data Structures — Sorting

Sorting animation

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Theory of Computation — halting problem

The argument that the power of mechanical computations is limited

is not surprising. Intuitively we know that many vague and speculative
questions require special insight and reasoning well beyond the capacity of
any computer that we can now construct or even foresee. What is more
interesting to computer scientists is that there are questions than can be
clearly and simple stated, with an apparent possibility of an algorithmic
solution, but which are know to be unsolvable by any computer.
Linz 6th, Section 12.1, page 310
An example of such a problem is if a grammar is ambiguous or not. (This can
formalized and is an interesting issue in constructing compilers.)
The proof that there are specific problems that cannot be solved, if not remarkably
simple.

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Theory of Computation — halting problem

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Numerical Analysis

A report from the United States General Accounting Office begins “On
February 25, 1991, a Patriot missile defense system operating at Dhahran,
Saudi Arabia, during Operation Desert Storm failed to track and intercept
an incoming Scud. This Scud subsequently hit an Army barracks, killing
28 Americans.” The report finds the failure to track the Scud missile was
caused by a precision problem in the software.
Nicholas J. Higham, Accuracy and Stability of Numerical Algorithms, SIAM, 1996,
ISBN13 9780898713558. Page 505.

http://www.ima.umn.edu/~arnold/disasters/disaster.html

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Networking

In the sliding window protocol the window size is the amount of data a sender is
allowed to have sent into the network without having yet received an
acknowledgment for it.
In Internet routers, active queue management (AQM) is a technique that consists
in dropping packets before a router’s queue is full.
Historically, queues use a drop-tail discipline: a packet is put onto the queue if the
queue is shorter than its maximum size. Drop-tails queue have a tendency to
penalize bursty flows.
Active queue disciplines drop packets before the queue is full based on probabilities.
Active queue disciplines are able to maintain a shorter queue length than the
drop-tail queue which reduces network latency.

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Distributed Computing — barber shop problem

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Parallel Computing
sing instr mult instr
single data SISD MISD
multiple data SIMD MIMD
Flynn’s taxonomy

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Information Management/Database Systems

The join of two relational tables

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Software Engineering — waterfall model

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Human-Computer Communication/Interaction

The Miracle Worker scene from Star Trek 4: The Voyage Home on YouTube.

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Graphics and Visual Computing
Frozen Fire
• 37 hours to render
• POV ray uses a C-like programming language

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Intelligent Systems

C3PO and R2D2 are fantasy robots

Computer Science (Introduction) from(Overview
What is CS? the movie
of Fields) Star Wars, while Kiva’s
© 11 April 2021 41 / 1
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End of the overview of different fields of study in computer science

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Layers, Scale, Interfaces

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The solution to vast complexity is layers. Good layers enable high-quality
specialization, bad layers just increase the complexity.
Software development—programming—is often about creating layers, even in small
programming projects.

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Computing is complex. There are many layers of interesting stuff between the
person and the automaton.

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Scale of the Universe 2
by Cary and Michael Huang

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The vastness and minuteness of time and space is a challenge to comprehend.

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SI Prefixes

A study of people in Nicaragua who were born deaf and never learned Spanish or a
formal sign language has concluded that humans need language in order to
understand large numbers. “Up to three, they’re fine," says Elizabet Spaepen, a
researcher at the University of Chicago and an author of the study. “But past
three, they start to fall apart."

http://www.npr.org/2011/02/09/

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SI Prefixes
peta P quadrillion 1015 1 000 000 000 000 000
tera T trillion 1012 1 000 000 000 000
giga G billion 109 1 000 000 000
mega M million 106 1 000 000
kilo k thousand 103 1 000
hecto h hundred 102 100
deca da ten 101 10
(none) one 100 1
deci d tenth 10−1 0.1
centi c hundredth 10−2 0.01
milli m thousandth 10−3 0.001
micro µ millionth 10−6 0.000 001
nano n billionth 10−9 0.000 000 001
pico p trillionth 10−12 0.000 000 000 001
femto f quadrillionth 10−15 0.000 000 000 000 001
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A Memory Aid for the SI Prefixes

[deca, hecto], kilo, mega, giga, tera, peta, exa, zetta

Karl Marx gave the proletariat eleven zeppelins.
[deci, centi], milli, micro, nano, pico, femto, atto, zepto
MicroSoft made no profit from anyone’s zunes.

Planets:
My very excellent mother just served us nachos.
Mary’s “Virgin” explanation made Joseph suspect upstairs neighbor.
Man very early made jars serve useful needs [period].

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A computer is a remarkable tool and easily works at all scale. Now some early
history of technology and scientific computing...

The MANIAC (Mathematical Analyzer Numerical Integrator And Computer Model

I) was an early computer built at the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory. It ran from
1952–1958.
• Klára Dán von Neumann - wrote the first programs for MANIAC.
• Dana Scott - programmed the MANIAC to enumerate all solutions to a
pentomino puzzle by backtracking in 1958.

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By mid-1953, five distinct sets of problems were running on the MANIAC,
charactered by different scale of time: (1) nuclear explosions, over in microseconds;
(2) shock and blast waves, ranging fmr microseconds to minutes; (3) meteorology,
rnageing from minutes to years; (4) biological evolution, ranging from years to
millions of years; and (5) stellar evolution, ranging from millions to billions of years.
All this in 5 kilobytes—enough memory for about one-half second of audio, at the
rate we now compress music into MP3s.

George Dyson, Turing’s Cathedral, 2012, page 298.

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Powers of Two
Because computers represent information in binary form, it is important to know
how many pieces of information can be represented in n (binary) bits. 2n pieces of
information can be stored in n bits, and so is it necessary to be familiar with
powers of two.
It is obvious that dlog2 ne bits are required to represent n things. Some bit patterns
might be unused.
20 1
21 2
22 4
23 8
24 16
25 32

(What does it mean that one thing can be represented with zero bits? There is no
need to represent one thing as there is nothing else which can be confused with it.)
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In Java, the expression

32 - Math.numberOfLeadingZeros(n-1)

will combute the number of bits necessary to represent n things.

The number of bits necessary to represent a natural number n is a closely related,
but different notion. blog2 nc + 1 is not the same thing as dlog2 ne.

n log2 n dlog2 ne blog2 nc + 1

1 0.0 0.0 1.0
2 1.0 1.0 2.0
3 1.6 2.0 2.0
4 2.0 2.0 3.0
5 2.3 3.0 3.0
See jgloss .

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Because information is represented in ones and twos, doubling (exponential
growth) is an important concept in computing.
To grasp it better, we use an ancient Indian chess legend.

A picture of Krishna playing Chess from the National Museum, New Delhi

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Legend of the Ambalappuzha Paal Payasam

According to the legend, Lord Krishna once appeared in the form of a sage in the
court of the king who ruled the region and challenged him for a game of chess (or
chaturanga).
The sage told the king that he would play for grains of rice—one grain of rice in
the first square, two grains in the second square, four in the third square, eight in
the fourth square, and so on. Every square would have double the number of grains
of its predecessor. The king lost the game and soon realized that even if he
provided all the rice in his kingdom, he would never be able to fulfill the promised
reward. The sage appeared to the king in his true form, that of Lord Krishna. and
said he could serve paal-payasam (sweet pudding made of milk and rice) in the
temple freely to the pilgrims every day until the debt was paid off.

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How many squares in a checkerboard? How big is 264 ?

103 kilo k
106 mega M
109 giga G
1012 tera T
1015 peta P
1018 exa E

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Maybe we can comprehend it better as weight or time. How much does a gain of
rice weigh? One grain of rice weighs about 0.029 grams. And, approximately 470
million tons of milled rice is harvested annually in the world today.

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0 1 0.029g
1 2 0.058g
2 4 0.116g
3 8 0.232g
4 16 0.464g
5 32 0.928g
6 64 1.856g
7 128 3.712g
8 256 7.424g
9 512 14.848g

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10 1 024 29.696g about an ounce
11 2 048 59.392g
12 4 096 118.784g
13 8 192 237.568g
14 16 384 475.136g about a pound
..
.
25 33 554 432 973.079kg about a ton
..
.
40 1 099 511 627 776 35 thousand tons
50 1 125 899 906 842 624 36 million tons
60 1 152 921 504 606 846 976 36 billion tons
64 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 589 billion tons

264 grains of rice is the total rice harvest for over 1200 years.

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Powers of Two (Time in Seconds)

Suppose we double 1 second and double the amount of time again. And, we do
this again and again.
0 1 1 second
1 2 2 seconds
2 4 4 seconds
3 8 8 seconds
4 16 16 seconds
5 32 32 seconds
6 64 about a minute
7 128 about 2 minutes
8 256 about 4 minutes
9 512 about 8 minutes

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Powers of Two

10 1 024 17 minutes
..
.
19 524 288 one week
20 1 048 576 two weeks
..
.
25 33 554 432 a year
..
.
30 1 073 741 824 34 years
40 1 099 511 627 776 37 millennia
50 125 899 906 842 624
60 1 152 921 504 606 846 976 age of universe

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Powers of Two

Notice that 210 ≈ 103 , so these powers have significance:

10 1 024 ≈ 103 kilo
20 1 048 576 ≈ 106 mega
30 1 073 741 824 ≈ 109 giga
40 1 099 511 627 776 ≈ 1012 tera
50 1 125 899 906 842 624 ≈ 1015 peta
60 1 152 921 504 606 846 976 ≈ 1018 exa
70 1 180 591 620 717 411 303 424 ≈ 1021 zetta

SI prefixes are not supposed to be used for powers of 2 (just powers of 10).
Sadly, abuse of SI prefixes in compter technology has led to confusion. Whereas
1GHz usually means 109 instructions per second, 1GB usually means 29 bytes.

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Powers of Two

Some other powers have special significance in computing.

exponent bit patterns
7 128 size of ASCII char set
8 256 size of Latin-1 char set
16 65 536 size of Java short
31 2 147 483 648 no. of neg int
32 4 294 967 296 size of Java int
63 9 233 372 036 854 775 808 no. of neg long
64 18 446 744 073 709 551 616 size of Java long

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One challenge in computer science is the vast scale of computing devices.
A computer may have a terabyte (1012 bytes) worth of storage. A computer may
execute ten instructions every nanosecond (10−9 seconds).

How does one deal with such complexity?

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Layers

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Car dashboard in an interface.
The details of the engine are immaterial to the user (but not to the mechanic).

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Interface Layers

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Computing is complex. There are many layers of interesting stuff between the
person and the automaton.
• person (user)
• user-interface (mouse, etc)
• application (program)
• high-level programming language
• machine language
• operating system (OS)
• hardware
• logical devices
• physics

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Definitions

• interface — An interface defines the communication boundary between two

entities, such as a piece of software, a hardware device, or a user. It generally
refers to an abstraction that an entity provides of itself to the outside.
• API — An application programming interface (API) is a set of procedures that
an operating system, library, or service provides to support requests made by
computer programs.
For example, the Java API . . ..
• IDE — In computing, an Integrated development environment (IDE) is a
software application that provides facilities to computer programmers of a
source code editor, a compiler and/or interpreter, build automation tools, and
usually a debugger.
[The definition of IDE does not really belong here.]

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Simple View of Programming

files
keyboard

program monitor

computer
OS
mouse

The program controls the computer, yet it needs critical assistance (from the
operating system) to communicate with the outside environment and even to run
effectively.

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Can a Java program print or display a ß (es-zet) character?
Can a Java program draw a red line on the display?
Can a Java program determined which button on the display was clicked or
touched?

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Can a Java program print or display a ß (es-zet) character?
Can a Java program draw a red line on the display?
Can a Java program determined which button on the display was clicked or
touched?
No, not really; yet we write Java programs to these things all the time. In reality
the capbilites of the system are determined by the hardware and managed by the
operating system.
Nothing can happen without the support of the operating system.
Java APIs abstract external communication. How easy these API’s are to use is
determined by the skill of the software designers.

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For a deeper appreciation of programming a computer, we should examine briefly
the many layers upon which the user depends.
An important lesson in organizing these complex systems is that the boundaries
should be well chosen. Rapidly changing technology, competing business interests,
and new insights make it impossible to settle these boundaries once and for all.
Whole college classes like computer architecture, operating systems, compiler
construction, and programming languages go into the subjects more deeply.

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Hardware and Operating System Platform

Application

System calls: open(), read(), mkdir(), kill()

Memory management
File system
OS:
Process management Networking

CPU Memory
Hardware: Network interface
Monitor
Disk Keyboard

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Example Platforms

• Hardware: IBM PowerPC, Intel x86, Sun Ultra-SPARC II

• OS: Microsoft Windows XP, Mac OS X v10.5 “Leopard”, Linux, Solaris 10

Try:

cs> uname -io

RackMac3, 1 Darwin

olin> uname -io

X86_64 GNU/Linux

The Java programming language (and other high-level languages) try to form a
high-level platform.

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Good interfaces mean you don’t have to understand the lower layers. For example,
you don’t have to understand electronic flip-flops in order to program.
The point is:
• Many interfaces are software constructions, and software interfaces are an
important design problem for programmers
• Many existing interfaces are in flux requiring an understanding of the lower
layers.

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Computer Hardware

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Computer Hardware

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Computer Hardware

Intel quad

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Computer Architecture—CPU

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Computer Architecture—CPU

control unit is the part of the cpu that controls all the internal actions of the cpu,
especially the fetch/execute cycle.
arithmetic/logic unit (ALU) is the part of the cpu that does operations: addition,
multiplication, etc.
memory data register (MDR) is the register of the cpu that contains the data to be
stored in the computer’s main storage, or the data after a fetch from the storage.
It acts like a buffer keeping the contents of storage ready for immediate use by the
cpu.

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Computer Architecture

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Computer Registers

Unfortunately, registers are always comparatively few in number, since

they are among the most expensive resources in most implementations,
both because of the read and interconnection complexity they require and
because the number of registers affects the structure of instructions and the
space available in instructions for specifying opcodes, offsets, conditions,
and so on.

Muchnick, page 110

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Memory Hierarchy

type access size cost

registers 5ns 1e2
caches (SRAM) 10ns 1e6 100.00 $/MB
main memory (DRAM) 100ns 1e9 1.00 $/MB
hard disk 5000ns 1e11 .05 $/MB
As the technology improves and the costs go down over time, the typical size of
each layer goes up. The ratio in access time between two layers influences the
design of the computer hardware. When the ratio changes significantly a different
design may achieve better performance.

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Cloud Computing

A final note about computers. The computing platform today is less concerned
about the individual computer and more concerned about the network of
interconnected computers on the Internet.

The network is the computer

Slogan of Sun Microsystems

Cue The Network is the Computer

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Java as a Teaching Language

The subject of this course is programming and teaching programming without any
particular programming language does not seem possible.
There are good reasons to learn any programmming language. There is no good
reason to be proficient in one programming langauge over the rest.
There is no best language for learning the others. So a comprise of different
pegadogic, societal, practical, and scientific factors govern the chose of Java.

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“Buzz” about Java

Buzz about Java might mean more jobs, more student engagement.
• TIOBE based on search results
• RedMonk based on github/stack overflow

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History of Java

• 1991: a small group led by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems rejected

C/C++ as the basis for digital consumer devices.
• 1993: Failed in win the contract from Time-Warner for the interactive cable
television trial in Orlando, Florida.
• 1995: WWW, browsers, Java, applets
• 2009: Oracle buys Sun
• 2010: Oracle sues Google over Java use in Android Java. “The lawsuit is one
battle in a whole war of the mobile industry. Virtually every major player is locked in
courtroom battles with another – many fighting on multiple fronts. Software patents,
which tend to be broad and subject to multiple interpretations, make for useful tools
to bludgeon competitors.”
• 2016 Android witches to OpenJDK

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Versions
JDK 1.0 January 1996
JDK 1.1 February 1997
J2SE 1.2 December 1998
J2SE 1.3 May 2000
J2SE 1.4 February 2002
J2SE 5.0 September 2004
Java SE 6 December 2006
Java SE 7 July 2011
Java SE 8 March 2014
Java SE 9 September 2017
Java SE 10 March 2018
Java SE 11 September 2018
Java SE 12 March 2019
Java SE 13 September 2019
Java SE 14 March 2020
Java SE 15 September 2020
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• 5 Generics, for-each loop, autoboxing, var args
• 8 Lambda
• 9 Modual system —project Jigsaw
• 10 Inferring the type of local variables from context
• 11 Local variable type inferenence with var
• 13 Switch expressions
• 15 Text blocks. Preview: sealed classes, record classes.

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enterprise computing
networking
telecommunications

programs
WWW applications databases

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Java platform overview

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• Java platform, Standard Edition (Java SE) is a computing platform for
development and deployment of software. Java SE was formerly known as
Java 2 Platform, Standard Edtion (J2SE).
• Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE) is a related platform that includes
all the classes in Java SE, plus anumber that are more useful to programs that
run on servers as opposed to workstations. Java Platform, Micro Edtion (Java
ME) is a related platform containing classes for resource-constrained devices
such as cell phone.
• The Java Development Kit (JDK) includes the translator and other tools. The
Java Runtime Environment (JRE) does not.
• OpenJDK (Open Java Development Kit) is a free and open-source
implementation of the Java SE. The OpenJDK is the official reference
implmeenion of Java and developed by Oracle Corportation, IBM, Apple, SAP
AG, and others.

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Java SE
platform overview

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Java SE (Standard Edition) 8 platform overview