Audience
This course will interest anyone who is interested in learning computer programming but has no formal knowledge.
Prerequisites
Students should have basic computer skills.
Duration
1 day. Hands on.
This course is available on site only. Please call for details.
Course Objectives
Computer programming is a broad subject, with many languages, design patterns and styles. For those that haven't done a computing degree, it can be hard to get started, with most commercial courses requiring prior programming knowledge of at least one language.
This course offers a gateway into programming for those people without any formal training or experience. It covers theories and concepts that apply to modern programming languages. This is exercised practically using the popular high level scripting language Perl. Perl's flexible TIMTOWTDI design makes it ideal to demonstrate the various methodologies. The understanding gleaned can then be applied to other programming languages, or used as a foundation for further Perl education.
Course Content
Computer Concepts
CPU.
Bits and Bytes.
RAM and Persistent Storage.
1GL.
2GL.
3GL.
Programming Concepts
Variables.
Constants.
Statements.
Flow.
Blocks.
Operations.
Boolean logic.
Conditionals.
Loops/Iterators.
State.
Hands on with Perl
Why Perl?
Comments.
Outputting data.
Executing scripts.
Scalars
Scalars as dynamically typed variables.
Using Scalars.
Working with Scalars.
Interpolation.
Joining strings.
Repeating strings.
Working with numbers.
Arrays
Ordered list of Scalars.
Defining.
Joining.
Push/pop.
Shift/unshift.
Sorting.
User Input
Command line arguments.
STDIN file handle.
Random values.
Conditionals
Boolean logic.
If.
Elsif.
Else.
Unless.
Hashes
As an associative array.
Keys and values.
Bag of keys.
Keys/values functions.
Delete.
Loops
For/foreach.
While.
Until.
Task
Task definition.
Example solution:
• Prepare the file.
• Logical steps.
• Create code.
Appetisers
Quotes/Quick quotes.
Environment variables.
Subroutines.
Functions.
Teaching Yourself More
Online:
• Sites.
• Communities.
Books.