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all right let's begin so as I mentioned

before this this this lecture will be

recorded for so again in the future

lectures if you don't want to have the

back of your head show up just don't sit

in this this front area here so first of

all what a crowd you guys were finally

in 26100 sixth circle and made it big

huh so good afternoon and welcome to the

very first class of six one and

also six hundred the semester so my name

is first name Anna last name

Bell I'm a lecturer in the EECS

Department and I'll be giving some of

the lectures for today along with later

on in the in the term professor Eric

who's sitting right down there

will be giving some of the lectures as

well okay so today we're going to go

over some just basic a

little bit of course information and

then we're going to talk a little bit

about what is so we'll

discuss at a very high level what

computers do just to make sure we're all

on the same page and then we're gonna

dive right into basics we're

gonna talk a little bit about

you can do with

and then we're going to talk

about variables and types so as I

mentioned in my all

the slides in code that I'll talk about

during lectures will be up before

lecture so I highly encourage you to

them and to have them open

we're gonna go go through some in class

exercises which will be available on

those slides and it's it's fun to do and

it's also great if you could take notes

about on the code just so you just for

future reference it's it's true it this

is a really fast paced course and we

really quickly so we do want

to position you to succeed in this

course so as I was writing this I was

trying to think about when I was first

starting the program you know what

helped me get through my first very

first programming course and this is

really like a good list so the first

thing was I just read the piece that's

as soon as they came out made sure that

you know the kind of just

sunk in and then during lectures you

know if the lecturer was talking about

something that

you know suddenly I remembered oh I saw

that word in the p-set and I didn't know

what it was well hey now I know what it

is right so just give it a read you

don't need to start it if you're new to

programming I think the key word is

practice so it's like math you know or

reading the more you practice the better

you get at it it you're not going to

absorb programming by watching me write

programs because I already know how to

program right you guys need to practice

so the code before

follow along whatever I type you guys

can type and I think also one of the big

things is if you're new to programming

you're kind of afraid that you're gonna

break your computer right and you can't

really do that just by running

and typing in some commands so don't be

afraid to just type some stuff in and

see what it does

worst case you just

right so yeah yeah so that's probably

the big thing right there I should

probably highlighted it but don't be

afraid great so this is pretty much a

road map of all of six one or 600

as I've just explained it so there's

three big things we want you to get out

of this course okay the first thing is

the knowledge of concepts which is

pretty much true of any class that

you'll take right the class will teach

you something through lectures exams

will test how much you know this is a

class in programming right the other

thing we need you we want you to get out

of it is programming skills and the last

thing and I think this is what makes

this class really great is we teach you

how to solve problems and we do that

through the psets

so that's really how I feel the

of this course looks like and underlying

all of these is just practice so you

have to just type some stuff away and

code a lot and you'll succeed in this

course I think okay so what are the

things we're going to learn in this

class I feel like the things we're going

to learn in this class can be divided

into basically three different sections

so the first one is

related to these first two first two

items here so it's really about learning

how to program so learning how to

program is part of it is figuring out

what what objects to create you'll learn

about these later how do you represent

knowledge with data structures that's

sort of the broad term for that and then

as you're writing programs you need to

programs aren't just sometimes

programs jump around they make decisions

there's some control flow to programs so

that's what the second line is going to

be be about the second big part of this

course is a little bit more abstract and

it deals with how do you write good code

good style code that's so when

you write code you want to write it such

that you know you're in big company

other people will read it other people

will use it so it has to be and

by others so to that end

you need to write code that's well

organized easy to understand

right and not only that not only will

your code be read by other people but

next year maybe you'll take another

course and you'll want to look back at

some of the problem sets you wrote in

this class you kind of want to be a

better re-read your code right if it's a

big mess you might not be able to

understand or we understand what you

what you were doing so writing

code and organizing code is also a big

part and the last section is going to

deal with so the first two are actually

part of the programming in introduction

to programming and computer science and

and the last one deals a little

bit it deals mostly with the computer

science part in introduction to

programming and computer science and

so we're going to talk about once

you've learned how to write programs in

Python how do you compare programs in

Python how do you know that one program

is better than the other right how do

you know that one program is more

efficient than the other how do you know

that one is is better than the

other so that's what we're going to talk

about in the last part of the course ok

so that's all for the sort of

administration part of the course so

let's let's

start by talking a little at a high

level what does the computer do so

fundamentally it does two things one

performs calculation and it performs a

lot of calculations right computers

these days are really really fast a

billion calculations per second is

probably not not far off it performs

these calculations and it has to store

them somewhere right stores them in

computer memory so computer also has to

remember results and these days it's not

to find computers with hundreds

of of storage so the kinds of

calculations that computers do there are

two kinds so one are calculations that

are built into the language so these are

the very low level x types of

calculations things like addition

and so on and

once you have a language that has these

sort of primitive calculate calculation

types you as a can put these

types together and then define your own

calculations okay and then create new x

types of calculations and the computer

will be able to perform those as well

okay and I think one thing I want to

stress and we're going to come back to

this in this this again during during

this entire lecture actually is

computers only know what you tell them

okay computers only do what you tell

them to do they're not magical they

don't have a mind they just know how to

perform calculations really really

quickly but you have to tell them how

what what calculations to do okay okay

computers don't know anything all right

we've come to that

so let's let's go into the types of

knowledge okay the first type of

knowledge is and

those are things like statements of fact

okay and this is where my came

into play if you read it all the way to

the bottom you would have entered a



okay so a statement of fact for today's

lecture is someone will win a prize

before class ends and the prize was a

right

Google's state-of-the-art virtual

reality glasses and I have them right

here

okay yeah okay

I delivered on my promise okay so that's

a statement of fact but if you so

pretend I'm a machine okay I don't know

anything except what you tell me what

you tell me so I don't know I know that

you tell me this statement I'm like okay

but how is someone gonna win a

before class ends right that's

where knowledge comes in so

knowledge is the recipe or

the how-to or the sequence of steps okay

sorry that's just my funny for that one

so the sequence of steps is is the

is knowledge so if

I'm a machine you need to tell me how

that someone will win a

before class right so if I follow these

steps then technically I should I should

reach a conclusion okay so step one I

think we've already done that who ever

wanted to sign up had signed up so now

I'm going to open my IDE so I'm just

basically being a machine and following

the steps that you've taken that you've

told me so the IDE that we're using in

this class is called I'm just

to the bottom okay hopefully

even started in promise at zero so I've

opened my IDE I'm gonna follow the next

set of instructions I'm gonna choose a

random number between the first and the

enth okay now I'm gonna

actually use Python to do this and this

is also an example of how just like a

really simple task in your life you can

use computers or programming to do that

because if I chose number

might be biased because for example I

might like the number eight so to choose

number

I'm going to go and say okay where's the

list of it starts at 15

actually it starts at 16 because that's

me okay so we're gonna choose

number between 16 and the end person to

66

oh we just got up okay - okay I'm gonna

cut it off right here at 271 okay 69 to

71 perfect okay so I'm gonna choose a

random number so I'm gonna go to my ID

and you don't need to know how to do

this yet but by the end of this class

you will so I'm just gonna use Python

I'm just gonna get the random number

package that's gonna get me

number so I'm gonna say random dot R and

and I'm going to choose

number between 16 and 272 okay

75 okay great so I chose a random number

and I'm gonna find the number in the

sheet what was the number

again sorry 75 okay up we go there we go

yeah nice you're here

[Applause]

[Music]

[Applause]

[Music]

alright so that's an example of

me being a machine right and also at the

same time using Python in just my

everyday life right just lecturing just

to find a random number right so just

you know try to use Python wherever you

can and that just gives you practice

okay so that was fun but right on my

team we're students right and we

love numbers here at MIT right so here's

a for that shows the

difference between and

knowledge so I want to find

the square root of so an example of

is the square root

of a number X is y such that Y times y

is equal to X okay that's just a

statement of fact it's true imperative

not so computers don't know what to do

with that right they don't know what to

do with that statement but computers do

know how to follow a recipe so here's a

well-known to find the square

root of a number X let's say X is

originally 16 so if a computer follows

this this it's going to start

with a guess let's say 3 right we're

trying to find the spirit of 16 we're

gonna calculate G times G is 9 right and

we're gonna ask is if G times G is close

enough to X and stop and say G is the

answer I'm not really happy with 9 being

really close to 16 right so I'm going to

say I'm not I'm not stopping here I'm

gonna keep going ok so if it's not close

enough then I'm gonna make a new guest

biabbering G averaging G and x over G so

that's x over G here and that's the

average over there and the new average

is going to be my new guess

okay and that's what it says and then

the last step is using the new guess

repeat the process so then we go back to

the beginning and repeat the whole

process over and over again okay and

that's what the rest of the rows does

and you keep doing this until you decide

that you're close enough okay so then so

what we saw for knowledge

in the previous was

the recipe right for how to find the

square root of x so what were the three

parts to the recipe one was a simple

sequence of steps right there were four

steps pretty much the other was a flow

of control so there were parts where we

made decisions right are we close enough

there were parts where we repeated some

steps so at the end we said repeat steps

one two three so that's the flow of

control and the last part of the recipe

was a way to stop right you don't want a

program that keeps going and going or

for a recipe you don't want to keep

baking bread forever right you want to

stop at some point like ten breads a

right okay so you have to have a

way of stopping okay and this in the

previous example the way of stopping was

that we decided we were close enough

close enough was maybe B being within

point zero one point zero one

whatever you pick so this recipe is

there for right if your

science speak it's gonna be

okay and that's what we're gonna learn

about in this class okay so we're

dealing with computers and we actually

want to capture a recipe inside a

computer computer of being a mechanical

process and historically there were two

ways of there were there were two two

ways of sorry historically there were

two different types of computers okay so

originally there were these things

called six program computers and I'm old

enough to have used something like this

where there's just numbers and plus

minus divided and equal

but these days are a lot

more complicated but way back then a

fix-up an example of a fixed program

computers is

it only knows how to do addition

division if

you want to plot something you can't if

you want to go on the internet check you

know said with it you can't it can

only do this one thing okay and if you

wanted to create a machine that did

another thing then you'd have to create

another fixed-program computers that did

a completely separate task okay so

that's not very great right so that's

when stored-program computers came into

play and these were machines that could

store a sequence of instructions and

these machines could execute the

sequence of instructions and you could

change the sequence of instructions and

execute a different see this different

sequence of instructions so you could do

different tasks in the same machine

right and that's the computer as we know

it these days

so the central processing unit is is

where you know all of these decisions

get made and these are all the sort of

so the basic machine

architecture so at the heart of every

computer there's just this this basic

architecture and it contains I guess

four main parts over the first is the

memory input and output is the other one

the ALU is where all of the operations

are done and the operations that the ALU

can do are these really primitive

operations and and so on so

what the memory contains is a bunch of

data and your sequence of instructions

okay

so the

unit is the control unit and the control

unit contains one program counter so

when you load a sequence of instructions

the program counter starts at the first

sequence it gets what the FIR starts at

the at the sequence at the first

instruction it gets what the instruction

is and it sends it to the ALU the ALU

asks what are we what what are we doing

operations on here what's happening so

it might get some data you know if

you're adding two numbers it might get

two numbers from from memory it might do

some operations and it might store data

back into memory okay and after it's

done the ALU is going to go back and the

program counter is going to increase by

one which means that we're going to go

to the next sequence in the instruction

set okay and it just goes like

instruction by instruction there might

be one instrument particular instruction

that does some sort of test it's gonna

say is is this particular is this

particular value greater or equal to or

the same as this other particular value

so that's a test an example of a test

and the test is going to be either

either return something either return

true or false and depending on the

result of of that test you might either

go to the next instruction or you might

set the program counter to go all the

way back to the beginning and so on so

you're not just sort of

stepping through all the instructions

there might be some control flow

involved where you might skip an

instruction or start from the beginning

or so on and after you're done when when

when you finished executing the last

instruction then you might output

something so that's really the basic the

basic way that a computer works okay so

just to you have the stored

program computer that contains these

sequences of instructions the primitive

operations that it can do our addition

logic operations tests which

are you know something equal to

something else something less than and

so on and

data storing data moving data around and

things like that and

goes through every instructions every

instruction and decides whether you're

going to go to the next instruction skip

instructions or repeat instructions and

so on okay so we've talked about

primitives and in fact the Alan

was a really great computer scientist he

showed that you can anything

using the six primitives and the six

primitives were our move left move right

read/write scan and do nothing okay so

using those six those six instructions

and the piece of tape he showed that you

could anything and using those

six instructions programming languages

came about that created a more

convenient set of primitives so you

don't have to program in only these only

these six commands right and one

interesting thing or one really

important thing that came about from

this from these six primitives is that

if you can something in Python

let's say if you write a program that

something in Python then in

theory you can come you can write a

program that the exact same

thing in any other language okay and

that's a really powerful statement okay

think about that today when you review

your slides think about that again and

that's really powerful okay so once you

set have your set of primitives you can

set of primitives for a particular

language okay you can start creating

expressions and these expressions are

going to be combinations of of the

primitives in the programming language

and the expressions are going to have

some value and they're gonna have some

meaning in in the programming language

okay so let's do a little bit of a

English just so you see

what I'm what I mean

so in English the primitive constructs

are going to be words okay there's a lot

of words in the English language

programming is in Python there are there

are primitives but there

many of them so there's there are floats

boolean's you know these are numbers

strings and simple operators like

addition and so on

okay so we have primitive constructs

using these primitive constructs we can

start creating in English phrases write

sentences and the same in programming

languages so in English we can say

something like cat dog boy okay that we

say is not valid so that's

bad right I that's now now

that doesn't make sense

what does have good in English is

verb so cat hugs boy is

valid similarly in a

programming language something like this

in Python in this case a word and then

the number five doesn't really make

sense it's not valid but

something like operator operator

is okay so once you've created these

these phrases or these these expressions

that are valid you have to

think about the of your

phrase okay of your expression so so for

example in English I are hungry is good

okay but it's kind of weird to

say right we have a of urban

adjectives later which doesn't really

make sense

right I am hungry this is better so this

is semantic this does not

have good similarly in

programming languages and you'll get the

hang of this hang of this the more you

do it something like this three point

two times five is okay but what does it

mean right what's the meaning to have a

word added to the number to a number

there's no meaning behind that right its

is okay because you have operator

operator but it doesn't really

make sense to add a number to a word for

example okay

so once you have created these

expressions that are

correct and static correct

in English for example you think about

the semantics so what's the meaning of

the phrase and in English you can

actually have more than one meaning to

an entire phrase okay so in this case

flying planes are dangerous or flying

planes can be dangerous can have two

meanings is the act of flying a plane is

dangerous or the plane that is in the

air is dangerous right and this might be

a cuter example this reading-lamp hasn't

a word since I bought it what's

going on right so that has two meanings

right it's playing on the word

reading-lamp in programming so that's

that's an English in English you can

have a sentence that has more than one

meaning

that's syntactically correct and static

correct but in programming

languages the program that you write a

set of instructions that you write only

has one meaning so remember we're coming

back to the fact that the computer only

does what you tell it to do okay it's

not going to suddenly you know decide to

add another variable for some reason

it's just going whatever

statements you've put up okay so in

programming languages there's only one

meaning but the problem comes the

problem that comes into play in

programming languages is it's not the

meaning that you might have intended as

the okay so that's where

things can go wrong and there's gonna be

a lecture on a little bit

later in the course but this is here

just to just to tell you that if you see

an error pop up in your program it's

just you know some text that says error

notes some for example if we do

something like this

this isn't actively correct

syntactically see there's some

angry text right here right like what is

going on the more you program the more

you'll get the hang of reading these

errors but this is basically telling me

this this the line that I wrote is

syntactically okay and it's

pointing me to the exact line and says

this is wrong so I can go back and fix

it as a

okay so are actually

really easily caught by Python static

so that was an example

of a errors

can also be caught by Python as long as

if if your program has some decisions to

make as long as you've gone down the

branch where this where the static

happens and this is

probably gonna be the most frustrating

one especially as you're starting out

the program might do something different

than what you expected it to do right

and that's not because the program

suddenly you know for example you

expected the program to give you an

output of zero for a certain test case

and the output that you got was 10 right

well the program didn't suddenly decide

to change its answer to ten it just did

executed the program that you that you

wrote right so that's the case where the

program gave you a different answer than

expected programs might crash which

means they stopped running that's okay

just go back to your code and figure out

what was wrong and another example of

different meaning than what you intended

was maybe the program will stop it's

also okay there are ways to stop it

besides okay so

then Python programs are going to be

sequences of definitions and commands

we're gonna have expressions that are

going to be evaluated okay and commands

that that tell to do

something

so if you've done problem set zero

you'll see that you can type commands

directly in the shell here which is the

part on the right where I did some some

really simple things two plus four or

you can type commands up in here on the

left hand side and then run your program

okay

notice that well we'll talk about this I

won't talk about this now but these are

on the right hand side typically you

write very simple commands just if

you're testing something out and on the

left hand side here in the editor you

write more lines and more complicated

programs okay so now we're going to

start talking about Python and in Python

we're gonna come back to this everything

is an object and python programs

manipulate these data objects all

objects in Python are going to have a

type and the type is going to tell

python the kinds of operations that you

can do on these objects so if an object

is the number five for example you can

add the number to another number

the number take it to the power

of something and so on more as a more

general example for example I am a human

so that's my type and I can walk speak

English etc is going to be a

type right so we can walk do

that sound that I can't do right so he

can do that but I can't I'm not even

gonna try and and so on okay so once you

have these Python objects everything is

an object in Python there are actually

two types of objects one are

object so that means these are very

basic objects in Python from which

everything can be can be made okay so

these are objects they can't be

the other type of object is a

object and these are objects

that have some internal structure so for

example the number five is a

object because it can't be

but a list of numbers for example five

six seven eight is going to be a

object

because I'm divided so you just can

it into you can find parts

parts to it it's it's made up of a

sequence of numbers right so here's the

list of all of the scalar objects in

Python we have for example all

of the whole numbers

floats which are all of the real

numbers anything with a bulls

our z' there's only two values

two boolean's that's true and false note

the capital T and capital

F and this other thing called none type

it's special it has only one value

called none and it represents the

absence of a type and it sometimes comes

in for some programs if you

want to find the type of an object you

can use this special command called type

and then in the you put down

what you want to find the type of okay

so you can write into the shell type of

five and the shell will tell you that's

an okay if you happen to want to

convert between two different types

Python allows you to do that and to do

that you use this you put the type that

you want to convert to right before the

object that you want to convert to so

float three will convert the

three to the float 3.0 and similarly you

can convert any float into an

and converting to an just

so it just takes away the

and whatever's after it it does

not round and keeps just the

part okay so for this slide I'm going to

talk about it but if you'd like go to if

you have the slides up go to go to this

exercise and after I'm done talking

about the slide we'll see we'll see what

people think for that exercise okay so

one of the most important things that

you can do in program in basically any

programming and also is to print

things out so printing out is how you

you the user okay so to

print things out you use the print

command so if you're in the shell if you

simply type 3 + 2 you do see a value

here 5 right but that's not actually

printing something out and that becomes

apparent when when you actually type

things into the editor so if you just do

3 plus 2 and you run the program that's

this little green button here you see on

the right-hand side here it ran my

program but it didn't actually print

anything if you type this into the

it does show you this value but

that's just sort of a like into

the value for you as just for you as a

okay it's not actually

printing it out to anyone if you want to

print something now you have to use the

print State print print statement like

that so in this case this is actually

going to print this number 5 to the

okay so that's basically my set

so out just tells you it's an

interaction within the shell only it's

not with anyone else

and if you don't have any how that means

it got printed out to the

alright so we talked a little bit about

objects once you have objects you can

combine objects and operators to form

these expressions and each expression is

going to have value so an expression

evaluates to a value and the syntax for

an expression is going to be object

operator object like that and these are

some operate operators you can do on

instant floats so there's the typical

ones addition subtraction

and division if for the first three you

have the answer that you get the type of

the answer that you get is going to

depend on the type of your variables so

if both of the variables of the opéra

are then the result

you're going to get is of

but if at least one of them is a float

than the result you're gonna get as a

float divisions a little bit special in

that no matter what the it are

the result is always going to be a float

okay the other upper operations you can

do in these these are these are also

useful is our so the % if

you use the % between two

that's going to give you

when you divide I by J and raising

something to the power of something else

is using the star star operator and I

star stars J is going to take I to the

power of J so these operations have the

typical that you might expect

in math for example and if you'd like to

put toward some other

operations you can use to do

that

yeah all right

okay so we have ways of creating

expressions and we have operations we

can do on on objects but what's going to

be useful is to be able to save values

to some name and the name is going to be

something that you can you pick and it

should be a and when

you save the value to a name you're

going to be able to access that value

later on in your program okay and that's

very useful so to save a value to a to a

variable to a variable name use the

equal sign okay and the equal sign is

the assign is an assignment so it

assigns the right-hand side which is a

value to the left-hand side which is

going to be a variable name so in this

case I signed the float 3.14159 to the

to the variable and in the second

line I'm going to take this expression

22 divided by 7 I'm going to evaluate it

it's going to come up with some some

number and I'm gonna save it

into the variable underscore aprox

okay values are stored in memory and

this assignment in Python we say the

assignment binds the name to the value

so when you when you use that name later

on in your program you're going to be

referring you're going to be referring

to the value in memory okay and if you

ever want to refer to the value later on

in your code you just simply type the

name of the variable that you that

you've assigned it to okay so why do we

want to give names to the two

expressions well you want to the

names right instead of a values and it

makes your code look a lot nicer so this

is a piece of code that calculates the

area of a circle and notice I've

assigned a variable to 3.14159 I've

assigned another variable called

to be 2.2 and then later on in my code I

have another line that's his area this

is another variable is equal to this is

an assignment

to this expression and this expression

is just going to is is referring to

these variable names and and

it's going to look them up their values

in memory and it's going to replace

their value their these variable names

with those values and it's going to do

the calculation for me and in the end

this whole expression is going to be

replaced by one number and that's gonna

be the float okay here's another

exercise while I'm talking about this

slide I do want to make a note about

programming versus math okay so in math

you're often presented with with was

sort of a problem that's a software

solve for X X plus y is equal to

something something solve for X for

example okay that's coming back to the

fact that program computers can't don't

know what to do with that computers need

to be told what to do

so in programming if you want to solve

for X you need to tell the computer

exactly how to solve for X you need to

figure out what formula you need to give

the computer in order to be able to

solve for X okay so that means always in

programming the right-hand side is going

to be an expression it's something

that's going to be evaluated to a value

and the left-hand side is always a

variable so it's going to be an

assignment so the equal sign is not is

not like an in math right where you can

have thing a lot of things to the left

and a lot of things to the right of the

equal sign there's only one thing to the

left of the equal sign and that's gonna

be a variable an equal sign stands for

an assignment once we've created

expressions and we have these these

assignments you can variable

names using new assignment statements

okay so let's look at an example for

that let's say this is our memory okay

let's look at let's type back in the

example with finding the okay so

let's say is equal to 3.14

okay so in memory we're going to create

this value 3.14 we're going to bind it

to the variable name pi

next line is equal to two point

two in memory we're creating this

variable of this value two point two and

we're gonna bind it to the to the

variable name pipe okay then we

have this expression here it's going to

substitute the values for pi from memory

and the value for radius from memory

it's gonna calculate this this this

about the value that this expression

evaluates to it's gonna pop that into

the memory and it's going to assign

because we're using the equal sign it's

gonna assign that value to that variable

area okay so now let's say we the

vat we

radius to be something else so radius is

already in is being is being is is bound

to the value 2.2 but when we do this

line radius is equal to radius plus 1

we're going to take away the binding to

2.2 we're going to make do this

calculation the new value is 3.2 and

we're going to bind that that

that value to that to that same variable

so in memory notice we're still going to

have this this value 2.2 floating around

but we've lost sort of the handle for it

okay there's no way to get it back so

it's kind of just in memory sitting

there at some point it might get

collected by what they what we call the

in Python it'll

retrieve these sort of lost values and

then them for new values and

things like that but radius now points

to the new value okay so we can never

get back to point 2

and that's it okay the value of area

notice this is very important the value

of area did not change okay and it did

not change because these are all the

instructions we told the computer to do

okay we told we just told it to change

radius to be radius plus one we never

told it to the value of area

if I copied that line down here then the

value of area would change but we never

told it to do that right so the computer

only does what we tell it to do that's

the last thing next lecture we're going

to talk about adding control flow to our

programs so how do you tell the computer

to do one thing or another all right