Should be proficient in previous skills/concepts, plus:

• Plan, execute and administer resources of a software development project efficiently.

• Chooses the best modeling strategies for different purposes.

• Understands the underlying concepts of different programming methodologies:

  • Small domain-specific languages, such as the interphase to program a robot.

  • Visual languages such as Scratch BYOB or Kodu.

  • Text-based languages, such as C#, C++, Java, Pascal, PHP, Python, Visual Basic, and so on.

  • Scripting languages, such as shell scripts, Flash ActionScript, or JavaScript.

  • Spreadsheet formulas

• If students choose programming projects, they should be able to:

• Design and write programs that include:

  • Sequencing: doing one step after another.

  • Choice (if-then-else): doing either one thing or another.

  • Iteration (loops): doing something repeatedly.

  • Language constructs that support abstraction: wrapping up a computation in a named abstraction, so that it can be re-used. (Procedure, or function with parameters.)

  • Some form of interaction with the program‘s environment, such as input/output, or event-based programming.

  • Find and correct errors in their code

• Become familiar with several key algorithms [sorting and searching].

• Manipulation of logical expressions, e.g. truth tables, DeMorgan‘s rules, and boolean valued variables

  • Two-dimensional arrays (and higher).

  • Use of nested constructs: a loop body can contain a loop, or a conditional, or a procedure call, etc. Similarly for conditionals.

  • Procedures that call procedures, to multiple levels. [Building one abstraction on top of another.]

  • Programs that read and write persistent data in files.

• Understands how computers represent data.

  • Hexadecimal

  • Two‘s complement signed integers

  • String manipulation- Data compression; lossless and lossy compression algorithms (example JPEG)

  • Problems of using discrete binary representations:

    • Quantization: digital representations cannot represent analogue signals with complete accuracy [e.g. a grey-scale picture may have 16, or 256, or more levels of grey, but always a finite number of discrete steps]

    • Sampling frequency: digital representations cannot represent continuous space or time [e.g. a picture is represented using pixels, more or fewer, but never continuous]

    • Representing fractional numbers

  • An introduction to SQL queries to enable data to be retrieved from databases. The SQL operators could include (but is not limited to) SELECT, arithmetic operators; Boolean operators; special operators such as Like, Between and Null; aggregate Functions; use of Count and Distinct; ordering and grouping; restricting groups using Having; and simple Joins.

• Knows the main components that make up a computer system, and how they fit together (their architecture).

  • Logic gates: AND/OR/NOT. Circuits that add. Flip-flops, registers (**) . BOK 2011 Page 16

  • Von Neumann architecture: CPU, memory, addressing, the fetch-execute cycle and low-level instruction sets. Assembly code. [LittleMan]

  • Compilers and interpreters (what they are; not how to build them).

  • Operating systems (control which programs are running, and provides the filing system) and virtual machines.

• Understands the principles underlying how data is transported on the Internet.

  • ​Client/server model.

  • MAC address, IP address, Domain Name service, cookies.

  • Some ―real‖ protocol. [Example: use telnet to interact with an HTTP server.]

  • Routing

  • Deadlock and livelock

  • Redundancy and error correction

  • Encryption and security