Introduction to Information Technology

...history, trends, basics, paradigms, business.

Course code: ITX0025
Teacher: Endre Domiczi
Contact: edo@iki.fi Subject should contain the string "itx0025"
Tel: 53485178 (SMS preferred) Link: http://www.lambda.ee/index/Introduction_to_Information_Technology or http://www.lambda.ee/index/itx0025
Link to last year Estonian version http://www.lambda.ee/index/Sissejuhatus_informaatikasse or http://www.lambda.ee/index/itv0010
Link to other course kept by EDo http://www.lambda.ee/index.php/Itx8065 i.e. http://www.lambda.ee/index.php/Software_Development_and_System_Programming

Latest News

03.09.2010 : Homework:

• read the PPT or PDF presentation at Introduction : Basics of Computers and Programming.
  Sometimes the download doesn't succeed (see also lecture day) then please retry after a while.

• From section (N)obligatory textbooks
  • find and install the DIY Calculator
  • download the Official DIY Calculator Data Book (PDF file)

This page is Under Construction.
Construction work started: 27.08.2010

Lecture: Amount, Time and Location, Scores

Lecture: Friday 8.00 - 9.30 at V-301 on week: odd

Lab: Friday 8.00 - 9.30 at IT-213D on week: even | Groups: TVTB11, TVTB12

Also visible at: http://deepzone1.ttu.ee/tunniplaan/q/q.php

ITK: course ends with EVALUATION. The Evaluation is in writing, two or more hours.

There will be an Evaluation/Exam in December (if allowed) and one or two in January.

(the exact dates will be announced later)

Exam, Preparation, Evaluation, Results

EXAM: to be announced later:

• One part of the exam is to "analyze" programs like Simple DIY Calc asm programs from the presentations

and the LAB exercises

• Another part of the exam will be about logical functions and how they can be implemented with simple logic gates.

To prepare please practice on the site of Christian Gottschall:

overview , practice here).

• Another part of the exam will be based on Logic circuits by D.Eck

Logic circuits

• The "fairy tale", i.e. the part about possible history questions can be found here:

Exam_material_2007-2008.pdf

Student Presentations & Rewards

• Student groups for presentation: please click here for signing up.
  • The email should contain for each group member the name, student number and email-address. Please don't touch the subject line (or only add to it)
  • group size is 1-3 persons
  • presentation time is min. 10 minutes, max. 15 minutes (maybe 20).
  • topics can be selected from materials on this page that are prefixed with "Additionally:" or you can come up with your own, but then you should agree on it in advance with me
  • choose a topic that you understand; you should be able to answer some questions related to the presentation
  • do not read only, but present

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• Valuable comments during lectures will also be rewarded
  • Solution of Robot-problem: Horst Engl (5 points), Philip Kaim (5 points) (pls email the solution to me)

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• Student presentations
  • Reelika Tammeoru & Kristina Laine: XLogic Circuits (both of them receive 30 points)

Course goals

• Give a compact overview of informatics as a whole.
• Give a historical overview of IT theory, technology and business development.
• Introduce future courses for further studies.

NB! the course DOES NOT TEACH elementary computer usage skills. Neither does it teach programming, although it gives a gentle introduction to programming.

Summary

Historical and conceptual overview of informatics as a domain of business, science and engineering. Early history of the domain, scientific and technical development at the beginning of the last century, the rapid development during the mid-century and the even faster paved changes in the scientific-, business and technological aspects during the last decades.

Main programming paradigms (imperative, logical, functional, object-oriented) as well as paradigms in system architecture (mainframes, personal computers, client-server systems, distributed and multi-layer systems).

The birth and disappearance of technologies, companies; trends, principles, specific events.

Please also see Course Register.

Lecture plan and materials

The course DOESN’T HAVE a single course-book. As follows, material for each lecture is given separately.

NB! Materials for not-yet-delivered lectures are preliminary: they are changed, supplemented during the course.

Introduction : Basics of Computers and Programming.

Lecture material: Intro2it_1_edo.PPT, Intro2it_1_edo.pdf.

Early History : Industrialization. Theoretical foundations. Logic.

Lecture material: intro2it_2_edo.ppt, Intro2it_2_edo.pdf.

Additionally:

• Paul Graham: What you'll wish you'd known
• A collection of web-based logic programs offering a number of logical functions by Christian Gottschall :

overview , formulae of classical two-valued propositional logic).

• A history of computers from the beginnings - ~1945:
• Computer History - lecture by Prof. Dr. Miroslaw Malek
• read and also play with the : Data Representations Applet (originally written by David Eck).

• Computer Origins and the Defense of the Faith by John Warwick Montgomery

"Medieval" history : from WWII till beginning of the 60's. Computers and programming. Languages and architectures. Integrated circuits.

Lecture material: intro2it_3_edo.ppt, Intro2it_3_edo.pdf.

Additionally:

• Paul Graham: Undergraduation plus: more advice for undergrads
• Eck intro lab: data reps.
• Eck lab: Turing machines.
• Earlier machines:
  • Example of an important analog computer: Norden bombsight
  • English cryptography saga: Colossus, Turing, Germans' Enigma and Lorenz SZ 40
  • First digital computers working with electricity:
    • Zuse electro-mechanical computer, compare with this site.
    • Atanasoff's electronic computer
    • Mark I: first programmable electro-mechanical computer.
• Read also: Chronology of Personal Computers by Ken Polsson

"Medieval" history (continued): 60's, beginning of the 70's. Minicomputers and microprocessors.

Lecture material: intro2it_4_edo.ppt, Intro2it_4_edo.pdf.

Additionally:

• Continuation to question "what to do in high school?". Joel Spolsky: Advice for Computer Science College Students
• PDP-1 Restoration Project
• Spacewar: first graphical computer game
• Atari muuseum
• mechanical pong
• SRI international
• Bell labs

"Medieval" history (continued): 70ś . MicroComputers, Personal Computers.

Lecture material: Intro2it_5_edo.pdf.

Additionally:

• Colossal Cave (adventure) textual adventure game
• Magnavox odyssey

Recent history: 80's till today. IBM PC, Macintosh, new and old operating systems. Special computers, workstations, essential software. Saga summary

Lecture material: intro2it_6_edo.PPT.

• Additionally: Apple Macintoshi reklaamfilm:
  • Small mpeg variant
  • Large quicktime variant

Basic principles of computers, programming languages.

Lecture material: Intro2it_7_edo.ppt.

Additionally:

• Get a bit acquainted with the following sites:
  • http://www.mkdata.dk/click/
  • Tom's hardware guide
• D.Eck, parts of this: Eck labs (can take from here as separate applications). NB! Read on your own, try and do 1-2 exercises from each part
  • Logic circuits
  • Memory circuits

Programming languages continued. Operating Systems.

Lecture material: Intro2it_8_edo.ppt.

Additionally: Eck labs cont'd: Read on your own, try and do 1-2 exercises from each part:

• xComputer
• xComputer assembly language

Obligatory reading (

• Obligatory is the first 1/4 of article In the Beginning was the Command Line

Suggested reading:

• The Art of Unix Programming
• Computer languages history
• About 2500 Computer Languages, Past and Present
• Computer language shootout
• Minix: the mini-Unix that was the inspiration of Linux
• Unix history

Information Systems

Based on:

Bennett, McRobb and Farmer:

Object Oriented Systems Analysis and Design Using UML, (3rd Edition), McGraw Hill, 2005.

Chapters 1-3

Object-Orientation, Modeling in UML

Based on:

Bennett, McRobb and Farmer:

Object Oriented Systems Analysis and Design Using UML, (3rd Edition), McGraw Hill, 2005.

Chapters 4-5

Software architecture and paradigms.

Lecture material: SW Arch & Paradigms.

Additionally: Become acquainted with:

• Stallman's funny song
• Linus Torvalds announcing Linux

Examples of exams from previous year (to practice)

• Exam 061213
• Exam 070108
• Exam 070115

NB!

• The questions will be different
• More difficult tasks give you more points than the easy ones:: most difficult 10-15 points, easy ones: 6-9 points. Altogether 100 points

(N)obligatory textbooks

To pass the course one must read the the following material. NB! The amount of obligatory material may be increased : follow the list

• DIY material (obligatory)
  • The Definitive Guide to How Computers Do Math: Featuring the Virtual DIY Calculator by Clive Maxfield and Alvin Brown
  • "DIY Calculator site"
  • On the DIY downloadpage you will find the DIY Calculator's installer
  • The Official DIY Calculator Data Booka 202 page (starting from 1 :-) PDF file
  • Instructions for various Labs
  • Workbench Lab instructions

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• History from the Beginnings - 1981 (worth a look, compulsory material: lecture): Bebop BYTES Back
• History 1945-1990 (worth a look, compulsory material: lecture): The Computer Museum.
• History 1947-1999 (it's not directly obligatory): author Ken Polsson.
• About Operating Systems in a broader context: The first 1/4 of the article is obligatory In the Beginning was the Command Line
• Obligatory articles from IT business and management. Not necessary to "learn" them, enough to have a fast read through:
  • Paul Graham: How to start a startup?
  • Paul Graham: Great hackers
  • Paul Graham: Why smart people have bad ideas
  • Joel Spolsky: Cover: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/
  • Joel Spolsky: Strategy: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000074.html
  • Joel Spolsky: Functional spec:Painless Functional Specifications (1. part): http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000036.html
  • Joel Spolsky: IT Work Arrangements : 12 steps: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000043.html
  • Joel Spolsky: Project Planning: Painless Software Schedules: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000245.html
  • Greenspun: Read only the Table of Contents, not needed to read the complete book!: http://philip.greenspun.com/panda/
  • Greenspun: Future Chapter: http://philip.greenspun.com/panda/future
  • Greenspun: Humor: http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/

Very useful material: read it!

• Read Daily: http://www.news.com
• Read Daily: http://www.slashdot.org
• Software management, about twice a month: http://www.joelonsoftware.com
• Paul Grahami essays, new ones less often.
• Jargon lexikon and the New Hacker's Dictionary.
• The cathedral and Bazaar
• Gnu manifests
• David Eck: Labs and Applets for "The Most Complex Machine".

If it all seems too easy, then:

• Read most of Paul Graham's essays.
• Read the book of Steven Raymondi (NB! difficult for beginners :-) The Art of Unix Programming
• Read through, very funny and educative book: Philip Greenspuni Guide to Web Publishing. If you feel like, find out what else Greenspun does (can read another book) and how this famous company was born and disappeared.
• Watch, what you can get from the net (hopefully): Semantic Web
• Read carefully (not at all obligatory and doesn't suit beginners) and also do the exercises: Computer Systems: a programmers perspective draft version.
• Read essays by Daniel Dennett
• Try to install Gandalf,an automated theorem proving, artificial intelligence system Gandalf (Unix or Windows+cygwin) and play around with it. Try also Otter (easier, but more classic system). How, read from here and from here and from here.
• Tee omal käel ette läbi terve Programmeerimise põhikursus (peaasi: tee kõik harjutustööd: programmeerimise õppimiseks ainus viis on palju programmeerida :-)
• Learn to program in assembler (fairly unpractical skill, but pretty educative :-)