Basic programming/algorithmic concepts [closed]

Answer 1

I could see a few different ways to take this:

1) Basic programming building blocks. What are conditional statements, e.g. switch and if/else? What are repetition statements, e.g. for and while loops? How do we combine these to get a program to be the sequence of steps we want? You could take something as easy as adding up a grocery bill or converting temperatures or distances from metric to imperial or vice versa. What are basic variable types like a string, integer, or double? Also in here you could have Boolean Algebra for an advanced idea or possibly teach how to do arithmetic in base 2 or 16 which some people may find easy and others find hard.

2) Algorithmically what are similar building blocks. Sorting is a pretty simple topic that can be widely discussed and analysed to try to figure out how to make this faster than just swapping elements that seem out of order if you learn the Bubblesort which is the most brain dead way to do.

3) Compiling and run-time elements. What is a call stack? What is a heap? How is memory handled to run a program,e.g. the code pieces and data pieces? How do we open and manipulate files? What is compiling and linking? What are make files? Some of this is simple, but it can also be eye-opening just to see how things work which may be what the club covers most of the time.

These next 2 are somewhat more challenging but could be fun:

4) Discuss various ideas behind algorithms such as: 1) Divide and conquer, 2) Dynamic programming, 3) Brute force, 4) Creation of a data structure, 5) Reducing a problem to a similar one already solved for example Fibonacci numbers is a classic recursive problem to give beginning programmers, and 6) The idea of being, "greedy," like in a making change example if you were in a country where coin denominations where a,b, and c. You could also get into some graph theory examples like a minimum weight spanning tree if you want something somewhat exotic, or the travelling salesmen for something that can be easy to describe but a pain to solve.

5) Mathematical functions. How would you program a factorial, which is the product of all numbers from 1 to n? How would you compute the sums of various Arithmetic or Geometric Series? Or compute the number of Combinations or Permutations of r elements from a set of n? Given a set of points, approximate the polynomial that meets this requirement, e.g. in a 2-dimensional plane called x and y you could give 2 points and have people figure out what are the slope and y intercept if you have solved pairs of linear equations already.

6) Lists which can be implemented using linked lists and arrays. Which is better for various cases? How do you implement basic functions such as insert, delete, find, and sort?

7) Abstract Data Structures. What are stacks and queues? How do you build and test classes?

8) Pointers. This just leads to huge amounts of topics like how to allocate/de-allocate memory, what is a memory leak?

Those are my suggestions for various starting points. I think starting a discussion may lead to some interesting places if you can get a few people together that don't mind talking on the same subject week after week in some cases as sorting may be a huge topic to cover well if you want to get into the finer points of things.

Answer 2

Someone mentioned above, "make programming fun". It is interesting today that people don't learn for the sake of learning. Most people want instant gratification.

Teach a bit of logic using Programming. This helps with(and is) problem solving. The classing one I have in my head are guessing games.

• Have them make a program that guesses at a number between 0 and 100.
• Have them make a black jack clone ... I have done this in basic :-(

Make paper instructions.

Answer 3

Just because you are familiar with algorithms does not mean you can implement them and just because you can program does not mean you can implement an algorithm.

Start simple with each topic (keep programming separate from designing algorithms). Once they have a handle on each, slowly start to bring the two concepts together.

Answer 4

Linked lists - a classic interview question, and for good reason.

Answer 5

The content in Deitel&Deitel's C++ programming is a decent introduction, and the exercises proposed at the end of each chapter are nice toy problems.

Basically, you're talking about: - control structures - functions - arrays - pointers and strings

You might want to follow up with an introduction to the STL ("ok, now that we've done it the hard way... here's a simpler option")

Answer 6

Breaking it Down

To me, what's unique about programming is the need to break down tasks into small enough steps for the computer. This varies by language, but the fact that you may have to write a "for loop" just to count to 100 takes getting used to.

The "top-down" approach may help with this concept. You start by creating a master function for your program, like

filterItemsByCriteria();

You have no idea how that will work, so you break it down into further steps:

(Note: I don't know C++, so this is just a generic example)

filterItemsByCritera() {
  makeCriteriaList();
  lookAtItems();
  removeNonMatchingItems();
}

Then you break each of those down further. Pretty soon you can define all the small steps it takes to make your criteria list, etc. When all of the little functions work, the big one will work.

It's kind of like the game kids play where they keep asking "why?" after everything you say, except you have to keep asking "how?"