How To Think Like A Computer Scientist: C++ Version Allen B. Downey

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The programming language you will be learning is C++, because that is the language the AP exam is based on, as of 1998. Before that, the exam used Pascal. Both C++ and Pascal are high-level languages; other high-level languages you might have heard of are Java, C and FORTRAN. As you might infer from the name “high-level language,” there are also low-level languages, sometimes referred to as machine language or assembly language. Loosely-speaking, computers can only execute programs written in low-level languages. Thus, programs written in a high-level language have to be translated before they can run. This translation takes some time, which is a small disadvantage of high-level languages.

One of the most important skills you should acquire from working with this book is debugging. Although it can be frustrating, debugging is one of the most intellectually rich, challenging, and interesting parts of programming. In some ways debugging is like detective work. You are confronted with clues and you have to infer the processes and events that lead to the results you see.

Debugging is also like an experimental science. Once you have an idea what is going wrong, you modify your program and try again. If your hypothesis was correct, then you can predict the result of the modification, and you take a step closer to a working program. If your hypothesis was wrong, you have to come up with a new one. As Sherlock Holmes pointed out, “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” (from A. Conan Doyle’s The Sign of Four).