London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)

Modules

Introduction to programming [129]

Selecting a programming language and world view
This topic briefly addresses the most common programming language world views (functional, modular, procedural and object-oriented) and investigates how to choose the most appropriate for a given problem.

Designing a solution
This topic discusses how a programming problem can be analysed to create an abstract, machine-independent solution design. The methods for the refinement of the abstract solution into a language-dependent solution are also investigated.

Implementing your solution
This topic investigates the program structures, control structures and selection structures that are available to the programmer to implement a given solution. The concepts of primitive and complex data structures are presented and discussed. As part of the implementation process, the programmer should produce programs that are understandable to other programmers. This investigates how a program can be documented to do this.

Testing your solution
Errors can occur during the design and implementation of a solution. This topic investigates such errors and what techniques can be used to rectify them. The use of a test plan to logical programming errors will also be discussed.