1 Module 1: Course Overview Course: CSE 460 Instructor: Dr. Eric Torng Grader/TA: To Be Determined

2 What is this course? Philosophy of computing course –We take a step back to think about computing in broader terms Science of computing course –We study fundamental ideas/results that shape the field of computer science “Applied” computing course –We learn study a broad range of material with relevance to computing today

3 Philosophy Phil. of life –What is the purpose of life? –What are we capable of accomplishing in life? –Are there limits to what we can do in life? –Why do we drive on parkways and park on driveways? Phil. of computing –What is the purpose of programming? –What can we achieve through programming? –Are there limits to what we can do with programs? –Why don’t debuggers actually debug programs?

4 Science Physics –Study of fundamental physical laws and phenomenon like gravity and electricity Engineering –Governed by physical laws Our material –Study of fundamental computational laws and phenomenon like undecidability and universal computers Programming –Governed by computational laws

5 Applied computing Applications are not immediately obvious –In some cases, seeing the applicability of this material requires advanced abstraction skills Every year, there are people who leave this course unable to see the applicability of the material –Others require more material in order to completely understand their application for example, to understand how regular expressions and context-free grammars are applied to the design of compilers, you need to take a compilers course

6 Some applications –Important programming languages regular expressions (perl) finite state automata (used in hardware design) context-free grammars –Proofs of program correctness –Subroutines Using them to prove problems are unsolvable –String searching/Pattern matching –Algorithm design concepts such as recursion

7 Fundamental Theme * What are the capabilities and limitations of computers and computer programs? –What can we do with computers/programs? –Are there things we cannot do with computers/programs?