COMP1511

Programming Fundamentals
Lecture 1
The Beginning
Today's Lecture

– Important details about the lecture format

– Who to contact if you need help
– How COMP1511 works
– How to get help when you need it
– What is programming?
– Working in Linux
– A first look at C
Who am I?
Really, who am I?

– Software Engineer
– Tennis lover
– Coffee aficionado
– Favourite languages
(right now):
Typescript, Python, C!
Course admins!

Nicole: Australia's #1
ranked Pokemon Go
player

Tammy: "Happiest person

Rory: Multi-Award winning of the year" 5 times
interactivity designer champ
We have Lecture Moderators!
 And we can't wait to meet you all <3
Let's take 5 mins to introduce yourself to
your neighbours (physical or virtual)
Important Resources
The Course page:
https://cgi.cse.unsw.edu.au/~cs1511/23T3/

– All important course information is on this

page
– We don't use Moodle!
– New Course Outline has moved!
Contacts

– Administration issues:
[email protected]
– Enrolment issues:
https://nucleus.unsw.edu.au/en/contact-
us
– Equitable Learning Plan:
[email protected]
Getting help with Programming
The Forum

– https://edstem.org/au/courses/13828/
– Post any content-related questions
here!
Details on Help Sessions, Revision
Classes, and more coming soon
Important resources recap

– Course page:
https://cgi.cse.unsw.edu.au/~cs1511/23T3/
– EdStem Forum:
https://edstem.org/au/courses/13828/discussion
Course Format

– Weekly lectures
– Weekly tutelabs
– 2x Major Assignments
– 1x Final Exam
Lecture Format
We're trying something new

– 2x weekly lectures as always

– Friday: In person lecture

11:00 - 13:00 in Ainsworth G03

– Monday: Online lecture only
– Youtube Live
Tutorials/Labs

– Tutelabs are scheduled as a single 3-

hour block
– Go further into topics we cover in the
lecture
– hands-on and practical!
Jake's Major Assignment pro-tips

– Start it as early as possible

– Don't plagiarise, we'll get ya
– Assignment 1 - 20% (Monday 8pm
Week 7)
– Assignment 2 - 25% (Friday 8pm Week
10)
What to do if you can't COMP1511
Feeling unwell? Need to travel back home
for an emergency? Dog ate your
assignment?

– special considerations:
https://student.unsw.edu.au/special-
consideration
Code of Conduct
We are here to learn

– Anything connected to COMP1511, including

social media, will follow respectful behaviour
– No discrimination of any kind
– No inappropriate behaviour
– No harassment, bullying, aggression or sexual
harassment
– Full respect for the privacy of others
Plagiarism, Contract Cheating,
ChatGPT, My Neighbour worked on a C
compiler
Quick break
COMP1511
Computers, compilers, programs, C,
operating systems, UNIX, Linux,
Terminal, Files, functions, oh my...
What is a computer?
 What is Programming?
Producing a set of instructions and/or
data to achieve a task
Writing a program is like
writing a recipe

– You provide the steps

required to solve the
task
– The computer executes
the program, completing
it step by step
– Any mistakes in your
recipe will alter the final
product (and probably
ruin it!)
How do these programs run?

– Computers are made up of many

programs, many executing at the same
time!
– Imagine if your kitchen was used to
prepare tens, hundreds of recipes all at
once
We need a head chef (operating
system)!
An Operating System is the interface between
the user and the computer hardware
Operating Systems:

– Execute user programs

– Make sure programs do what they're
supposed to
– Schedules access to limited resources
(hardware)
– Make the computer system convenient to use
The Linux Operating
System

– A UNIX-based
operating system
– Open-Source, reliable,
lightweight and secure
How do programmers interact with a
computer?
The Terminal

– Send text-based commands to our shell

– Terminal handles user input, rendering shell output

The Shell
The shell, (bash, zsh) is
a program that executes
commands, and has its
own syntax. It returns
output which the
terminal can display
The Prompt
The prompt is controlled by the shell, and
is the line of text which displays some
information
How do I use this thing?
Important terminal commands

– ls : Lists all the files in the current directory:

– mkdir <dir name> Makes a new directory
called directoryName:
– cd <dir name> : Changes the current
directory to directoryName:
– cd .. : Moves up one level of directories (one
folder level):
– pwd : Tells you where you are in the directory
structure at the moment:
File operations

– cp <source> <destination> : Copy a file from the

source to the destination

– mv <source> <destination> : Move a file from the

source to the destination (can also be used to rename)

rm filename : Remove a file (delete)

The -r tag can be added to cp or rm commands to

recursively go through a directory and perform the
command on all the files

cp -r <source> <desitnation>
 But Jake! I don't have a Linux
computer!!!
Don't worry! We have one for you <3
Let's get set up together

– Log into VLAB

– Open the Terminal
– Run 1511 setup
Now we have the tools, so can we write
out first program yet?
– Computers execute precise instructions
described in a native language to
computers
– This language is not easy for us to
understand:

00000000: 0100 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000

0000 0000
00000010: 1011 0110 0000 0000 0000 0000
0000 0010
00000020: 0000 0100 0110 0000 1001 0000
0000 0000
Computers need precision!
So machine code is too precise...
Why can't we just say "Hey computer!
Add two numbers together!
Programming
Precise enough to be translated to
machine code
Simple enough that a human can
(sometimes) understand it.
A shared language
Programming in C
Why C?
And what a beautiful language
#include <stdio.h>

int main(void)
{
printf("Hello world");
return 0;
}
Demo (follow along if you can)

1. Create a .c file using the Terminal

2. Write our hello world program using
VSCode
3. Save it
Let's break it down
// loads the standard input/output library
#include <stdio.h>

// the main function, the starting point of

our program
int main(void) {
// prints the string to the standard
output
printf("Hello world");

// returns 0 to the operating system

return 0;
}
#include <stdio>

– Some tasks are so common, that it

would be wasteful to have to write them
every time
– Common code is available for us, in the
standard C library
– We need to tell the compiler which
libraries to use
#include <stdio>

– In this case, we want the Standard

Input Output Library

This allows us to make text appear on

the terminal

Almost every C program you will write

in this course will have this line
The main block
int main(void) {
...
}

– The main function

– Every C program must have 1 main
function! It's where our program starts!
– Program runs in sequence, line-by-line
starting inside the main block
Blocks of code
{
...
}

Between each { and } are a block, or

group of instructions.
Blocks are very important! They are how
we organise code
The printf
{
printf("Hello world!");
}

printf() makes text appear on the screen.

It is a function from stdio.h which we
included.
return 0

return is a C keyword that tells the

computer that we are now delivering the
output of a function.
A main function that returns 0 is signifying
a correct outcome of the program back to
the operating system
Comments!

– We place “comments” in programs explain to

our future selves or our colleagues what we
intended for this code

// in front of a line makes it a comment`

If we use /* and */ everything between them
will be comments
The compiler will ignore comments, so they can
be anything you want really!
Compiling
Remember, C is a shared language, so
we can be productive
Computers can't understand C
We need to turn our C code into machine
code using a compiler
Compilers are programs
That turn code into machine code.
dcc program.c -o helloWorld
./helloWorld

This compiles a C program into an

executable called helloWorld, and runs it
Modern technology has changed a lot
But what hasn't changed
Is computers executing instructions
described by humans
What will you build?