Unit I — Course Intro; Visual Studio Intro

Day 1 — Course Intro

Logistics

• Today
  • Seating arrangements & roll
  • Course & instructor introduction
  • Success in this course
  • Brief discussion of Programming & PcPI
• Wonderings? Comments?
  • ?

Roll & Seating Chart

• Temporary seating chart today; revise/finalize it next time
• Why choose a seat
  • to see/hear better
  • to be near friends
  • to be near helper/helpee
  • to have access to electrical power
  • to be closer to/farther away from me
• Change places if you want
• Take roll; produce seating chart

Instructor & Course Introduction

• Me
  • Philip East, east@cs.uni.edu, cs.uni.edu/~east (web site)
  • I have moderate to severe hearing loss, so please speak loudly
  • I like talking to students about their programs and difficulties they encounter
  • Wonderings? Comments?
    • ?
• Course information (from syllabus) discussion/questions
  • My office hours and office location?
    • ?
  • Course grading elements?
    • ?
  • Nature of homework assignments and submissions?
    • ?
  • How do competency demos work?
    • ?
  • What is expected on with regard to the project?
    • ?
  • Is there a final? (what? or what instead of?)
    • ?
  • Extra credit?
    • ?
• What else do you know or what to know about the course? Wonderings? Comments?

  List & discuss student responses.
• Why are you here?

  List & discuss reasons students supply.
• Anything else? Wonderings? Comments?

Programming & PcPI

This course hopes to teach (that you learn) programming (in Visual Basic). So, ...

• What is programming?
  • ?
  • Preparing a set of instructions for the computer to carry out.
• Basic elements/aspects/skills/understandings of programming
  • "simple" data and collections of "simple" data representing the "problem" being solved
  • determining the manipulations of the data that "solve" the problem
  • sequencing action statements that accomplish the desired manipulations
  • selecting between alternative actions (with action/no action a possibility)
  • repeating actions a given number of times or under specified conditions (so long as something remains true or until something becomes true)
  • modularizing a set of actions—creating a new action by combining basic actions (and/or previously created actions)

  (data, actions, sequence, selection, repetition, modularization)

• Wonderings? Comments?
  • ?

Programming is problem solving

Like giving directions in a foreign language, programming is a problem solving activity. But, for people learning to program, there are three problems, not one. In our example, you'd first have to figure out just what directions you wanted to give. Then, you would have to translate those directions into the foreign language (and translations are not simple word for word substitutions). But if you don't know the foreign language, you have to learn the language before/as you do the translation. Similarly for programming—3 problems:

• Developing the solution (probably an outline of actions needed to solve the problem)
• Translate the solution into code, including making sure the problem representation in data the computer understands will work
• Deciding which language pieces you need to translate the solution into—may involve learning pieces you didn't

PcPI (didn't get to this in class)

Programming is often taught like math. We show you a "thing" and ask you to work on a bunch of "things" like it. Then we show you another "thing" and ask you to practice things like it. And another, and another, and ... But, they (math folks) and we (computer science folks) don't usually address what the "things" are good for—how they help us solve problems. We (several of my colleagues and it) think you will learn better if you see the how/why—the context of the problems.

PcPI (problem-centric programming instruction) attempts to focus on problems as we teach programming (rather than just teaching the language being used). So, many of the exercises and problems will be presented with a story/context or as a word problem. That means that you will have to figure out what to to before you start doing it, i.e., it will be (hopefully) a problem solving process.

In most problem solving contexts all you have to do is solve the problem. In programming you have to develop a solution to the problem and then covert the solution to a computer program. For you, there is the additional burden of learning how to program while you are doing the problem solving.

Just like riding a bike, playing a musical instrument, performing a beautiful dive, etc., programming is easy, if you know how to do it. If you don't know how to do it, it might come to you fairly easily, but it might also be quite daunting. With PcPI we are trying our best to work on all three problems: solving the problem, converting the solution to code, and learning the code and how it works.

So, ...

• Assignments will have lots of practice exercises to cover learning the programming language
• Most of them will have a problem context that is an "every day" kind of problem (for someone). Those that don't will be in the form of a generalized problem, e.g., "Find the largest of three values."
• Units IV & V will have slightly larger problems that involve choosing or repeating the kinds of things learned in Units II & III
• We will talk about problems, problem solving, and a process you can use when you have trouble.

Wonderings? Comments?

• ?

Course Success

Our goal is to be successful? What does that mean? What can we do to make the course successful? (Discuss student responses to the following.)

• What does success look like? For you?
  • ?
• What does success look like? For me?
  • You achieved a level of programming ability that allows you to make informed choices about whether to program or to learn more programming.
  • You learned enough programming to be willing to use programming if you think it is appropriate to current situation.
  • More specifically
    • students all do all the practice/homework activity
    • students all pass all the competency demonstration
    • students complete the project they chose

    I truly believe that doing the homework and the project will cause you to learn to program

  • You come to class, participate in class activity. and ask questions when you don't understand.
  • ?
• What can I do to enhance the likelihood or degree of success for reaching our goals?
  • ?
• What can you do to enhance the likelihood or degree of success for us all?
  • Attend class and think/question during presentations and discussion. (What is being said? Do I understand/does it make sense? Do I agree? ...)
  • Read suggested parts of the text. Review class notes after class.
  • Ask questions when you don't understand/agree.
  • Persist when I am too dense to see your point.
  • Do all the assignments to the best of your ability.
  • Seek help when you have difficulty on the assignments. (e-mail, office hours, classmates, ...)
  • Look things up—in the text, on the web, in my class notes
  • Start thinking about what you want to do for your project.
  • ?
• Anything else? Wonderings? Comments?
  • ?

Next Time/To Do:

• Plans:
  • Final seating chart
  • Visual Studio demo (if computers have been updated; otherwise we will discuss problem solving, problem representation, and algorithm development)
• To prepare for class:
  • If you have a Windows machine, download and install Visual Studio (Mac folks have to use a PC or figure out how to run windows on their machines.) Start it up (to make sure it works).

Any final questions? comments? wonderings?   . . .   See you Thursday.

Day 2 — Visual Studio Demonstration (Flyby vs demo AND problem solving demo)

Logistics

• Roll & finalize the seating chart
• Demonstration of Visual Studio (if laptops ready to go)
• Problem example (if laptops not ready)
• Wonderings? Comments?

Visual Studio

Even though our computers are not ready, I will want to provide an overview of using the system. We will do this more step by step in class, next time. The text below describes the overview, I will merely run the through the process at this time.

Overview

Visual Studio is an IDE (interactive development environment) for creating programs in a variety of languages, including Visual Basic. The first programming task is to create the forms/windows for the program. Then code can be written to indicate what happens with each of the form elements/controls.

Typically each VB program is a project which has a number of forms or windows, one of which is a start form called Form1. Forms have properties each having default or assigned values. We will want to change the values for some of the properties (e.g., name and text). Then we will start producing our forms. When we have them created we will need to identify which form we want to use as our start form.

We will typically just ignore Form1, the default form Visual Studio creates as we produce the form(s) needed for our program(s). (Ask me why if you want to know.) The general process for doing a VB program/project is:

• Start a new project (naming it while doing so)
• Create our first form for the project (naming it while doing so), and:
  • Change appropriate/desired form property values using the Properties window,   probably: Text, Size (manually or via Properties), ControlBox;   perhaps ForeColor, Font, BackColor;   and possibly something else.
  • Add controls using the Toolbox window, commonly: TextBox, Label, Button, GroupBox, CheckBox, RadioButton;   perhaps: PictureBox, ListBox, MenuStrip   and other elements needed by your project, e.g., OpenFileDialog, DateTimePicker, ProgressBar, ComboBox, etc.
  • Change properties of the various controls we place on a form, commonly: Name, Text;   perhaps: Font, ForeColor, BackColor, AutoSize, Size, TextAlign, ReadOnly, Multiline, Checked, TabIndex, etc.;   and possibly something else.
  • Adjust the size of the form and the layout of elements on the form, perhaps via the Format tab
  • Check to see that it shows up and works like we want by using the Start tool on the toolbar at the top of the window, perhaps after setting the value of StartForm property of the project.
  • Use Save All to ensure the project is recorded on persistent storage
• Creating remaining forms
• Producing code for the forms and form controls

The material below in the next class notes provides details of this process.

Problem Solving

Last time we talked about programming and problem solving. Remember that one part of programming is determining how to represent the problem using the data definitions available in the programming language. VB has controls that are a kind of data but there is other data underlying those controls. There are three (I forgot one last time) kinds of data in VB—numbers, characters, and Booleans. Boolean data consists of just two values, True and False. Our solution and our program needs to be in terms of those kinds of data.

Determining the problem representation and developing a solution/algorithm are a chicken and egg situation. One doesn't necessarily come first and they both are necessary. The material below suggests we think first about possible general solutions; then problem representation, then algorithm development.

Missing Card Problem

• Discuss the problem—you have a deck of cards, one unidentified card is removed, the task is to determine the missing card.
• Identify possible solutions
  • students work with a classmate to discuss how to approach the problem (3-5 minutes)
  • list the approaches and briefly discuss them
  • comments? wonderings?
• How can we represent this problem for the computer? (list any suggestions)
• Likely representations of this problem for a computer program
  • card
    • a pair of strings ("Spades", "Hearts", "Clubs", "Diamonds" & "Ace" and"Two", ... "Queen", "King")
    • a pair of numbers (1-4 for suit and 1-13 for rank)
    • a single number (probably 0 - 51) each with an interpretation that yields a unique pair of values for suit and rank
  • deck
    • an array or other collection of string pairs
    • an array or other collection of number pairs
    • an array or other collection of numbers

  If we wanted to use pictures of cards in our program, we would merely need to know which card. In this case we would likely use a single number for a card and the collection of numbers for the deck.

• Solution/Algorithm

  Regardless of the algorithm, the following will likely be the general solution.

      initialize-deck
      shuffle-deck
      remove-a-card
      determine-missing-card
      report-missing-card
  

  The part we are most interested in is the "determine-missing-card" part (module).

• One solution/algorithm (make piles by suit)

      for each card we have
          get/look-at-the-card
          if  the-card-is-a-spade
              put-it-in-the-spades-pile
          if  the-card-is-a-heart
              put-it-in-the-hearts-pile
          if  the-card-is-a-club
              put-it-in-the-clubs-pile
          if  the-card-is-a-diamond
              put-it-in-the-diamonds-pile
  
      set  pile-found  to  false
      repeat until  pile-found
          choose suit pile to work with (set current-suit)
          set count to 0
          for each card in the pile
              add 1 to count
          if  count < 13
              set  pile-found  to  true
              set  missing-card-suit appropriately
  
      sort-the-pile (Ace down to Two)
  
      for each card in the pile
          if  card-does-not-match-position
              set  missing-card-rank  appropriately
      
      report the missing card
  

  Once we decide how to represent the cards, the above "algorithm" can actually be translated pretty much directly into code. The code would depend on the presentation of the deck and the programming language we were using, but not much else.

• An alternative solution/algorithm (a checklist)

      create a checklist (has a value for each card)
      for each item in the list
          set it's value to False
  
      for each card in the deck
          get/look at the card
          set the checklist item for that card to True
  
      for each item in the checklist
          if  checklist item's value is False
              set missing card values
  
      report the missing card
  

• Comments? Questions? Wonderings?

Next Time/To Do:

• Plans:
  • step by step Visual Studio demo
  • zipping and submitting project code
• To prepare for class:
  • Download and install Visual Studio if desired.

Any final questions? comments? wonderings?   . . .   Have a good weekend. See you Tuesday.

Day 3 — Visual Studio Demonstration/Practice

Logistics

• Roll
• Demonstration of Visual Studio
• Wonderings? Comments?

Laptop Use in ITTC 328

• Go to the cabinet;   pick a laptop   unplug it;   and note its location/number
• Return to your seat and open the lap top;   if it doesn't light up, press the power button
• If it asks for a bit locker password, enter compsci1
• When directed, press CTRL-ALT-DELETE and log into your UNI active directory, be patient
• Start Visual Studio
• Do your work
• Log out
• Return the laptop to the cart, in the appropriate position above its number, and plug it in

Getting Started

The practice activity will be essentially the preparation of the forms we'll use in Unit II. The process overview is:

• Access the computer & log in
• Start Visual Studio—don't sign in
• (First time only, we hope) Choose Visual Basic as the preferred development setting (and wait patiently)

Before we go any further we need to sketch out our forms for the project. We need three forms—a start form, a numerics form, and a strings form. The ACSII art below approximates a sketch done on the board.

• Start form

      ========================================
      |  VB Practice Options                 |
      |--------------------------------------|
      |                                      |
      |           ----------------           |
      |          ( Numeric Basics )          |
      |           ----------------           |
      |                                      |
      |           ----------------           |
      |          ( String  Basics )          |
      |           ----------------           |
      |                                      |
      |           ----------------           |
      |          (     E X I T    )          |
      |           ----------------           |
      |                                      |
      |                                      |
      ========================================   
  

• Numeric Basics form

      ==========================================================
      |  Basic Numeric Tasks, Operations, Functions, etc.      |
      |--------------------------------------------------------|
      |                                                        |
      |            ---------------------        ------------   |
      |  Input 1: |                     |      ( Basic Math )  |
      |            ---------------------        ------------   |
      |            ---------------------        ------------   |
      |  Input 2: |                     |      (  Advanced  )  |
      |            ---------------------        ------------   |
      |            ---------------------        ------------   |
      |  Input 3: |                     |      (  Functions )  |
      |            ---------------------        ------------   |
      |            ---------------------                       |
      |  Input 4: |                     |                      |
      |            ---------------------                       |
      |                                                        |
      |                                                        |
      |                         ---------------------          |
      |         Result/Output: |                     |         |
      |                         ---------------------          |
      |                                                        |
      |                                                        |
      |                     -------------                      |
      |                    (   E X I T   )                     |
      |                     -------------                      |
      |                                                        |
      ==========================================================   
  

• String Basics form

      ========================================================
      |  Basic String Tasks, Operations, Functions, etc.     |
      |------------------------------------------------------|
      |                                                      |
      |                 ---------------------------------    |
      |  "Small" Text: |                                 |   |
      |                 ---------------------------------    |
      |                 ---------------------------------    |
      |   Bigger Text: |                                 |   |
      |                |                                 |   |
      |                |                                 |   |
      |                |                                 |   |
      |                 ---------------------------------    |
      |                                                      |
      |                 ---------------------------------    |
      |  Result/Output:|                                 |   |
      |                 ---------------------------------    |
      |                                                      |
      |                                                      |
      |   ------------      ------------      ------------   |
      |  (    Basic   )    (  Advanced  )    ( Functions  )  |
      |   ------------      ------------      ------------   |
      |                                                      |
      |                    -------------                     |
      |                   (   E X I T   )                    |
      |                    -------------                     |
      |                                                      |
      ========================================================   
  

The general process for this activity is shown below. After that a more detailed set of directions is provided.

• Create a new (named) project
• Add a form
  • Create and name the form
  • Add controls to the form
  • Change their properties appropriately
  • Double-check form appearance
  • Save All regularly
• Add other forms with appropriate controls and appearance
• Add code to connect the forms
• Test the project

Let's Do It!

First, we'll do a step by step or the first/start form.

First Form

• Everybody have Visual Studio running? (Handle any problems)
• Create new, named project
  • Double check: Visual Basic is selected; Windows Forms Application is highlighted
  • Enter project name in text box near bottom of the screen (I suggest VB-practice_xxx where "xxx" is replaced by your initials)
  • Note the path of the project so you can find it. You may want to click the Browse button to put the file on your desktop or some other special place
  • Click the OK button (be patient)
• Add a new, named form
  • Click on the Project tab
  • Select Add Windows Form… (at top of menu choices)
  • Change name from Form2.vb to something else (I suggest Start.vb
  • Click the OK button

  A new form appears. I suggest you hide the Form1.vb (Design) window by clicking the   X   on its tab.

• Set form properties
  • Find the Properties window; make sure the form is selected (thin line surrounding it and little adjustment squares at right, bottom and lower-right corner)
  • Text

    Set the Text property. I suggest something like "VB Practice Options"

  • ControlBox

    Find the ControlBox property, click on it, select False from the menu.

  • Other stuff

    Explore and perhaps chance other properties such as Font, BackColor, ForeColor

• Add a button for the numeric practice form
  • Find the Toolbox window; then the Button choice.

    Either click and drag a button to the form OR click the Button choice and then click on the form. A button should appear.

  • Set the button's properties
    • place the button about where you want it
    • change the button's Text property ("Numeric Basics")
    • adjust the size of the button to suit you (and show the text clearly
    • change the button's Name property—always do this. I suggest something like "btnNumerics"

      There are some standard prefixes for control Name values, e.g., btn, txt, lbl, rdo, chk. Using them is suggested. Changing the Name values from Button1, Button2, TextBox1, TextBox2, etc. is expected/required

    • other stuff

      Explore and perhaps chance other properties such as Font, BackColor, ForeColor

  • Adjust the button's position to suit you
• Add another button (for the string practice button)

  You can use the process above to add the next button OR you can copy and paste the first button and change it properties appropriately. Those directions follow

  • change the Text property value ("String  Basics")
  • change the Name property value ("btnStrings")
  • Other stuff?
• Add the Exit button
  • change the Text property value ("E X I T")
  • change the Name property value ("btnExit")
  • change the color property value (to red)
  • change the Font property value (to something squarish & bold and probably larger)
• Check the layout, adjusting positioning, etc. of the elements within the form
• Save All

Questions? Comments? Wonderings?

Next Form

Okay, let's move on the the "Basic Numeric Tasks ..." form. The new things here are:

• Label control

  Find Label in the tool box and put one on the form. Then change its Text property value.

• TextBox control

  Find TextBox in the tool box and put one on the form and:

  • change its Text property value.
  • change its Name property value—the standard prefix is txt, so the name might be "txtInput1"
• Copy and paste the label & text box pair
  • select the two controls (click and drag to include both)
  • copy them
  • paste them (twice)
• Change the Text and Name properties for both labels and text boxes as we've done before
• Finally, note that you can copy controls from one from and paste them to another. So, copy and paste the exit button from the first form and paste it here.
• You still have to do the three buttons but that should be a repetition of what we did above. Be sure to change both the Name and Text properties

I think/hope the above material allows you to complete the second form. If not, let me know.

Third/Last Form

Okay, let's move on the the "String Tasks ..." form. Remember that you can copy and paste a label & text box pair from the previous form to this one. The "new" things here are:

• needing to make the first text box wider/longer

  Just grab (click & drag) the square at the bottom right to make the box bigger.

• needing to make the second text box taller

  This requires setting a property value—theMultiline property to True.

It was suggested in class that we could copy and paste the buttons from the second file as a group ... and that works! And the names and text properties are copied as well and that is okay because there can controls can have the same name IF they are on different forms.

I think/hope the above material allows you to complete the last form. If not, let me know.

Next Time/To Do:

• Plans:
  • "running" the program
  • zipping and submitting project code
  • practicing all this
• To prepare for class: bring any questions you have

Any final questions? comments? wonderings?   . . .   Have a good weekend. See you Thursday.

Day 4 — Visual Studio Demonstration/Practice

Logistics

• Roll
• Today: Unit-I practice activity (some demonstration then worktime)
• Wonderings? Comments?

Last time we were working on a project that we might use when we start Unit II. I mentioned running the program but did not do anything with that. So we'll do that right quick. So ... start up Visual Studio with your program from last time loaded.

To Run the Program

When you run a Visual Basic program, it will load its start form. Typically that is the first form created in the project. But we have been ignoring that original form (Form1.vb) and creating a different start form. To make things happen correctly we need to change the start form, i.e.,

• click on the Project tab
• select the project Properties … (at the bottom of the menu)
• find the Startup form: selector (about the middle of the window)
• click on the selector and choose the form you want to start
• close the properties tab/window (by clicking on the X next its name)

Once you've done that click on Start icon and see what happens. Hopefully the form you choose shows up. And nothing else should happen since we haven't provided and instructions to be carried out in the form. You'll need to click the red square on the toolbar to get the program to stop.

	Dim newWindow As New form name
	newWindow.ShowDialog()

	Me.Close()