CMSC 140: Introduction to programming
Spring 2020
Prof. Blaheta
In the last decade, we have seen huge increases in the computational thinking required in a wide variety of disciplines; across the natural and social sciences, the arts, and even in the humanities, researchers and practitioners are finding that they have data, they need to process it, and no completely off-the-shelf solution will do. They need to write a program to solve a problem. In this course, we will introduce the concepts and ways of thinking required to write straightforward programs to process a variety of kinds of data.
This class meets on MWF at 10:00am (Section 1, in Ruffner G54) and 1:00pm (Section 2, in 352).
The textbook is Automate the Boring Stuff with Python, 2nd edition, by Al Sweigart; there is a print version (which I recommend---it's fairly inexpensive), and the full text of it is also available online. There will be regular in-class and out-of-class assignments drawn from the book, so you should bring it (either the print copy, or a device to access it online) to every class.