CPSC 101A - Test #3 Topics

Programming Languages (Selected parts of Chapters 1, 7 & 8)

• Know the levels of programming languages (p. 21)
• Know what machine language/code is (p. 197). Understand why it is difficult to program in machine language (not just the problem with 0s and 1s!).
• Know what assembly language is and what an assembler is. (p. 211)
• Know what high-level languages are. In particular know what two early languages FORTRAN and COBOL were developed for (see chapter 1); and know about more modern languages C, C++, Java.
• Know about compilers and interpreters - what they are, why they are needed, what the difference is, which JavaScript uses.

JavaScript and HTML Forms (Handouts and Labs)

• Know the HTML tags for creating forms and elements on forms including textboxes, buttons, checkboxes, and radiobuttons. Know the script tag.
• Understand the importance and meaning of the attributes of these tags - in particular the NAME attribute, SIZE, VALUE, and onClick attributes.
• Know the overall format of an HTML document that contains a JavaScript function and an HTML form.
• Be able to write a JavaScript function to perform some task.
• Be able to intrepret common JavaScript error messages.
• Know what comments are in JavaScript - what they are for, what symbols indicate a comment, and how the computer interprets them.
• Know what a variable is. Know the relationship to memory. Know the rules for creating a legal variable name.
• Be able to write an assignment statement that gets data from a textbox on a form and stores it in a variable.
• Be able to write an assignment statement that performs some calculation and stores the result in a variable.
• Be able to write an assignment statement that stores some value (a variable or a string or some expression) in a textbox on a form.
• Know the rules for evaluation of expressions. Be able to evaluate expressions and be able to write expressions to perform calculations.
• Be able to describe how an assignment statement is executed by the computer in general (the expression on the right is evaluated and the result is stored in the location on the left side which will be either a JavaScript variable or a textbox on the form) and for specific assignment statements.
• Be able to write if... else... statements: including if statements with multiple alternatives; cascading if statements that use a minimum number of comparisons; if statement that tests to see if a checkbox has been checked; if statements that determines which of a set of radio buttons has been selected.
• Be able to write boolean conditions with and (&&) and or (||).

Networking, the Internet, and the Web (Chapter 15, Section 16.1)

• Know what a computer network is. Know the terminology: node, host, data transfer rate, bandwidth. Know the three types of wires that provide physical connections (twisted pair, coaxial cable, fiber optic).
• Know the basic idea of a client/server model. Understand how the client/server model works for Web browsing. Know what a file server is and understand the relationship to the Z drive at Roanoke College. Be able to list other types of servers (web servers, email servers, etc).
• Know what LAN and WAN mean.
• Know what an ISP is and know the 3 popular ways to connect to the Internet from home (through phone modem, Digital Subscriber Line - DSL, and cable modem). Know which of these are considered broadband connections.
• Understand what a phone modem does - in particular be able to relate it to the idea of analog and digital data. Know what the word modem stands for.
• Understand the concept of packet switching.
• Know the role of routers in the transfer of data through a network.
• Know the difference between open systems and proprietary systems. What is the advantage of an open system?
• Know the basic idea of the OSI Reference Model - know the basic idea of the top layer and the bottom layer (that is, know the names and what each of these deals with). You do not need to know the names of all the layers in between.
• Know what a protocol is and what a protocol stack is.
• Know what TCP/IP is - understand the basic things each of these protocols deals with.
• Be able to give some examples of high-level protocols.
• Understand network addressing. In particular, know what each of the following is (what it is, what it does): hostname, domain name, top-level domain, IP address, domain name system, domain name server.