Programs

• A program is a set of instructions for a computer to follow that directs the

computer to do the tasks you want it to do and produce the results you
want.
• A program is like a recipe. It contains a list of variables (called ingredients)
and a list of statements (called directions) that tell the computer what to
do with the variables.
• Following the instructions is called running or executing the program
• We use programs almost daily (email, word processors, video games, bank
ATMs, etc.).
• Programmers tell a computer what to do through programs. Without
programs, a computer is an empty machine.
• Computers do not understand human languages, so we need to use
computer languages to communicate with them
• Programs are written using programming languages
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Running a Program
• Normally, a computer receives two kinds of input:
• The program
• The data needed by the program.

• The output is the result(s) produced by following the instructions in the

program.

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Programming Languages
• Programming languages are a set of instructions written in a way that
a computer could understand

• Why do we need programming languages?

• All computer components: Central Processing Unit(CPU), memory,
and Input/Output (I/O) understands a machine code called a
binary.
• Binary is a long string of 0’s and 1’s that human cannot
understand!
• So how can we make the computer to perform a certain task?
• Programming languages helps us in doing so by providing an intermediate
solution between the human and the machine
• Each language has a unique set of keywords (words that it
understands) and a special syntax for organizing program instructions.

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 Syntax and Semantics of programming
languages
• Syntax and Semantics provide a language's definition.

• The grammar rules for a programming language are called the syntax of the language
(detected by the compiler). Different languages have different syntax.
• e.g., while statement in java
• while (boolean_expression) statement

• The interpretation or the meaning of the statements is called the semantic of the
language.
• e.g., Array index out of range:
int[] v = new int[10];
v[10] = 100; // 10 is not a legal index for an array of 10 elements
• e.g., Use of a non-initialized variable:
int i;
i++; // the variable i is not initialized

More details:
https://newtutorial2012.blogspot.com/2012/07/differentced-between-synataxsemantic.html
https://www.inf.unibz.it/~calvanese/teaching/ip/lecture-notes/uni10/node2.html 9
Programming Languages (cont.)
Programming languages could be Assembly High-level
categorized into:

• Low-level languages (machine

language): they are close to the
machine language e.g. assembly
language
• High-level languages: they are
closer to the programmers'
language (more friendly!) e.g.
Java

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Levels of Programming Languages

• High-level languages are relatively easy

Natural Language
to use (i.e., more flexibility, easier to
be Implemented, maintained)
Very High-Level
Language
• Unfortunately, computer hardware does
(e.g., Java, C++, C#)
not understand high-level languages!
• Therefore, a high-level language High Level Language
program must be translated into a (e.g., Fortran, Cobol)
low-level language.
Assembly Language
(Intel:8086, Sun
Sparc)

Speed Machine Language

(e.g., 01001110000)
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Choosing A Language

• Depends on your tasks:

• Satellite communication (speed) à Assembly
• Educationà Basic, Pascal
• Business à Cobol
• Web developmentà JavaScript, JSP, .NET
• Scientific calculationà Fortran, Matlab
• Embedded and Operating Systemsà C
• Enterprise applications à Java

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Translating/Converting High-level to
Low-level
• A source program must be translated into a machine code.
• An application program called a translator which transforms code
from High Level Language to Low Level Language, making it
machine understandable code.
• Compilers and interpreters are simply language translators in
computer programming.
• The program is run by loading machine code into main memory. The
processor directly executes these machine language instructions

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Compilers

• A compiler is a program that takes a high-level language program and

translates the entire program into machine code all at one time
• All instructions are compiled before any are executed by the CPU
• The Java compiler (javac) translates Java source code (Hello.java) into a
special representation called bytecode (object program)
• When a Java program is translated into bytecodes, the bytecodes are
exactly the same no matter what computer system is used
• Compilation process occurs only once and the resulting object program
could be run as often as needed without re-compiling the source
program

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Interpreters
• An interpreter reads through a source program written in a high level
language and performs the instructions that the source program asks
for one by one.
• Once a given instruction has been translated and executed, the next
one then will follow, and son on
• The Java Virtual Machine (JVM) uses an interpreter, to translate
bytecode into machine language and executes it

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Java Programming Language

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 Java History
• Java is a high-level object-oriented programming
language developed by James Gosling at Sun
Microsystems in the early 1990s.
• He was unhappy using c++ programming language so
he developed java.
• Java Old name was “Oak”
• 1995 “Oak” was renamed as Java as a core
components of Sun microsystems java platform
• Java is a consolidation language, designed to absorb
the strengths of earlier languages and ignore their
weakness

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Java Features

• Simple
• Platform-Independent (portable)
• Object-Oriented
• Robust and Secure
• Compiled and interpreted
• Distributed
• Multithreaded
• Architecture-Neutral
• High-performance

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 Java Features (Cont.)
• Simple
• Java syntax is based on C++ (greatly simplified and improved).
• Java has removed many complicated and rarely-used features, for example,
explicit pointers, operator overloading, etc.
• There is no need to remove unreferenced objects because there is an
Automatic Garbage Collection in Java.
• Platform-Independent (portable)
• Write once run anywhere
• Java is completely portable; the same Java code will run identically on
different platforms, regardless of hardware compatibility or operating
systems.
• Object oriented
• OOP is a popular programming approach that is replacing traditional
procedural programming which offers great flexibility, modularity, clarity,
and reusability
• All coding and data reside within objects and classes

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Java Features (Cont.)

• Robust and secure

• Exception handling built-in strong type checking
• automatic garbage collection so all memory corruptions or unauthorized
memory accesses are impossible
• strong memory management (no-pointers).
• Programs run inside the virtual machine sandbox
• Compiled and interpreted
• Code is complied to bytecode that are interpreted by a JVM
• Distributed
• Creating applications on networks.
• Multiple programmers can work together on a single project from multiple
remote locations and share data and programs.

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Java Features (Cont.)

• Multithreaded
• It allows to handle multiple tasks simultaneously (run multiple threads )
• Architecture-Neutral
• no implementation dependent features e.g. size of primitive types is fixed.
• High-performance
• The new JVM uses the technology known as just-in-time (JIT) compilation.
• With JIT complier the interpreted code gives almost the native code speed.

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