Introduction to Programming (Second Edition)

Course length: 1 day (6 Hours)

Course description:

Overview: This course introduces you to general programming concepts. Although the programming concepts introduced in this course apply to most programming languages, this course uses Visual Basic 6.0 running under Microsoft Windows as the platform for learning.

Prerequisites: To ensure your success, we recommend you first take the Software Training course, Windows 98: Introduction, or have extensive equivalent knowledge.

Delivery method: Instructor-led, group-paced, classroom-delivery learning model with structured hands-on activities and independent lab activities.

Benefits: Students will learn general programming concepts that provide a basis for programming in many different languages.

Target student: The target student is interested in learning general programming concepts. This course provides a foundation for students desiring to go on and learn one or more programming languages.

What's next: Any of Software Training's introductory courses on programming languages would be a good course to take after this one. For example, students wishing to learn more about Visual Basic programming could take Visual Basic 6.0: Introduction.

Performance-based objectives

Lesson objectives help students become comfortable with the course, and also provide a means to evaluate learning. Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to:

· Describe features and benefits of prevalent programming languages, and describe the general phases of software development, including: planning, coding, compiling, linking, and debugging.

· Define the following terms related to object-oriented programming: objects, encapsulation, classes, instantiation, properties, methods, and events.

· Identify and describe the purpose of literals, operators, and functions.

· Use variables and constants to write programs that perform calculations.

· Explain the purpose and general functionality provided by conditional statements, relational operators, and logical operators.

· Explain the purpose and general functionality provided by Do While and For Next loops.

· Explain the benefits of dividing large programming tasks into smaller tasks.

· Identify the scope of variables within a given program.

Course content

Lesson 1: Overview of programming

Programs and languages

The programming process

Lesson 2: Object-oriented programming

Overview of object-oriented technology

Event-driven programming

Lesson 3: Calculations

Literals, operators, and functions

Lesson 4: Storing Values

Variables and data types

Lesson 5: Making decisions

Branching

Lesson 6: Looping

Exploring loops in Visual Basic

Lesson 7: Making programs modular

Units of code

Scope