Course overview
The aim of this course is to develop problem solving skills and core programming techniques to acquire and process real-world data related to civil, electrical, mechanical and other engineering problems. This course allows students to develop an understanding of fundamental programming concepts and the relevance of programming in solving engineering problems. These concepts will be applied through design and implementation of programming code and the use of microcontrollers. The course also covers coding standards and good programming practices, as well as problem solving processes and tools.
Programming concepts covered in this course include: representing data (data types, variables, constants); math and Boolean expressions (relational, equality and Boolean operators); control constructs (sequence, selection, iteration); using and writing functions (call by value and call by reference); arrays (1-D and 2-D); strings; pointers; dynamic memory allocation; structures; array of structures; multi-file programs; standard and file input and output. Programming integrated development environments (for both C and microcontrollers) will be used.
Course learning outcomes
- Apply problem solving strategies to move from a problem statement to a code solution.
- Implement, test and debug programs using the C programming language and choose appropriate conditional and iteration constructs for a given programming task.
- Analyse and explain the behaviour of programs.
- Program a microcontroller to perform a simple task relevant to a civil, electrical, mechanical or other engineering problem.
- Apply good programming practices, specifically, international coding style standards and source code documentation.