ME171

COMPUTER PROGRAMMING
LANGUAGE

Lecture 1: Introduction
Course Teacher
Md. Tusher Ahmed
Lecturer
Department of Mechanical Engineering
Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology
Courtesy: Dr. Sumon Saha
Mr. Partha Kumar Das
 COURSE DESCRIPTION
ME171: Computer Programming Language
3 Credits- Total Marks: 300
1 Lectures per week on my part
Schedule: Saturday
Section A Section B Section C
10.00am-11.00am 12.00pm-1.00pm 9.00am-10.00am

Course Teacher: Md. Tusher Ahmed, Lecturer, Dept. of ME, BUET

Contact No. : 01766199991
Email address: tusher_ahmed@me.buet.ac.bd
tusherahmed94@gmail.com
Office: ME511A, 4th Floor , EME Building
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 Attendance 10%
 Class Test/Assignment 20%
 Term Final Exam 70%
 Pass Marks: 40% A+: 80%
 Academic Offences:
1.Plagiarism is a major academic offence
2.Proxy in class attendance is strictly forbidden.
3.Proper citation of any reference material is needed in
preparation of assignment.

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 CLASS ENVIRONMENT
 Feel free to share your concerns and ideas to me within the class duration
(inclusively to me only).
 Be ready for daily class performance.
 Bring necessary papers, pencil, calculator, books, lecture copies etc.

It’s not the teacher who teaches, it’s the students who learns.- A quote best fits
for any software learning course from my own experience as both Student and
Teacher
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 Language: Mode of Communication
• We, the human being, need language to
interact each other.
• It is only the language for the lack of
which we can not communicate to
animals or insects.
• Every electronic devices (starting from a
LED to Core i3 processor) works only on
two basic operation: On (1) and Off (0).
• That means, combination of only two
digits (0 and 1) is sufficient enough to
interact with any electronic devices.
• In case of high performance multi-
tasking device like a computer, this
combination is not so much human
friendly for which it necessitates another
mode of communication: Programming
Language.
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 Programming Languages

• A programming language is a set of rules that create a

pathway to let a computer know what the operator or
programmer wants to do with it.
• It is a notational system for describing a computational
problem from a human readable to machine readable
form.

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 Computer Languages
• Machine Language
• Uses binary code
• Machine-dependent
• Not portable
• Assembly Language
• Uses mnemonics
• Machine-dependent
• Not usually portable
• Efficient but difficult to understand
• Used for mainly operating system development
• High-Level Language (HLL)
• Uses English-like language
• Machine independent
• Portable (but must be compiled for different platforms)
• Easy to write and understand
• Used for complex scientific and engineering tasks
• Examples: Pascal, C, C++, Java, Fortran, Python . . .
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 Machine Language

• The representation of a computer program which is

actually read and understood by the computer.
• A program in machine code consists of a sequence of machine
instructions.
• Instructions:
• Machine instructions are in binary code
• Instructions specify operations and memory cells involved in
the operation
Example: Operation Address

0010 0000 0000 0100

0100 0000 0000 0101

0011 0000 0000 0110

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 Assembly Language

• A symbolic representation of the machine language of

a specific processor.
• Is converted to machine code by an assembler.
• Usually, each line of assembly code produces one
machine instruction (One-to-one correspondence).
• Programming in assembly language is slow and error-
prone but is more efficient in terms of hardware
performance.
• Mnemonic representation of the instructions and data
• Example:
Load Price
Add Tax
Store Cost

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 High-Level Language
• A programming language which use statements
consisting of English-like keywords such as "FOR",
"PRINT" or “IF“, ... etc.
• Each statement corresponds to several machine
language instructions (one-to-many correspondence).
• Much easier to program than in assembly language.
• Data are referenced using descriptive names.
• Operations can be described using familiar symbols.
• A machine language system program, called a
compiler, is needed to compile or transform the code
into machine readable form.
• Example:
Cost = Price + Tax

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 Computer Languages
High-level program class Triangle {
...
float surface()
return b*h/2;
}

Low-level program LOAD r1,b

LOAD r2,h
MUL r1,r2
DIV r1,#2
RET

Executable Machine code 0001001001000101001001

001110110010101101001.
..

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Programming
Language
Family Tree

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 Programming Languages

• Two broad groups

• Traditional programming languages
• Sequences of instructions
• First, second and some third generation languages
• Object-oriented languages
• Objects are created rather than sequences of instructions
• Some third generation, and fourth and fifth generation
languages

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 Typical Programming Languages

• FORTRAN
• FORmula TRANslation.
• Developed at IBM in the mid-1950s.
• Designed for scientific and mathematical applications by
scientists and engineers.
• COBOL
• COmmon Business Oriented Language.
• Developed in 1959.
• Designed to be common to many different computers.
• Typically used for business applications.

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 Typical Programming Languages

• BASIC
• Beginner’s All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code.
• Developed at Dartmouth College in mid 1960s.
• Developed as a simple language for students to write
programs with which they could interact through
terminals.
• C
• Developed by Bell Laboratories in the early 1970s.
• Provides control and efficiency of assembly language
while having third generation language features.
• Often used for system programs.
• UNIX is written in C.

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 Typical Programming Languages
• C++
• An object-oriented programming language.
• It is C language with additional features.
• Widely used for developing system and application
software.
• Graphical user interfaces can be developed easily with
visual programming tools.
• JAVA
• An object-oriented programming language similar to
C++ that eliminates lots of C++’s problematic features
• Allows a web page developer to create programs for
applications, called applets that can be used through a
browser.
• Objective of JAVA developers is that it be machine,
platform and operating system independent.
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 Special Programming Languages
• Scripting Languages
• JavaScript and VBScript
• Php and ASP
• Perl and Python
• Command Languages
• sh, csh, bash
• Text processing Languages
• LaTex, PostScript
• HTML
• HyperText Markup Language.
• Used on the Internet and the World Wide Web (WWW).
• Web page developer puts brief codes called tags in the
page to indicate how the page should be formatted.

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 Course Outline

Almost everything about C

(approximately up to Custom Data Types)

An introduction of programming on Python

(up to 3-4 lectures)

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 Course Material
1. Teach Yourself C - Herbert Schildt
2. The C Programming Language –
Brian W. Kernighan, Dennis M. Ritchie

3. Programming in ANSI C –
E Balagurusamy

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That’s All
Thank You

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