Content and information provided by Randy Luecke.
Definition of Computer Programming
Wikipedia defines computer programming as "the process of writing, testing, debugging/troubleshooting, and maintaining the source code of computer programs. This source code is written in a programming language. The code may be a modification of an existing source or something completely new. The purpose of programming is to create a program that exhibits a certain desired behaviour (customization). The process of writing source code often requires expertise in many different subjects, including knowledge of the application domain, specialized algorithms and formal logic."
I know there are a couple people who are interested in programing. Some of whom plan to take the Intro to Programming course, that's all great but some of you are freshman and plan to take it as an upper class man. If you're interesting in software engineering there is no need to wait for someone to teach you. You need to take initiative and pursue this interest on your own.
Don't worry about what language to learn, it doesn't matter; you need to get the fundamentals down before you can build off of them.
Stanford University offers some of their Computer Science classes online as free downloads. Course material includes:
1. Videos of the lectures
2. PDF of the handouts
3. some other stuff that's probably useful.
I took their Programing Methodology class last year and it was very helpful moving from a procedural background to object-oriented languages.
More details can be found here...
http://see.stanford.edu/see/courses.aspx
Students interested in programming should consider studying the following:
Programing Concepts
Procedural programing
C (C tutorial) - strict/loosely typed languages, Loops, Variable (types)
Object-Oriented Languages
C++ (online tutorial)
Objective-C (Objective-C tutorial)
Java (Java SE6 Tutorials)
Scripting
Bash shell scripting (everyone in IT should know)
Javascript