Basic Computer | Algorithm | Programme Operations

These post is for those that have interest in computer programming. Therefore if you like or want learn programming, then you are home, welcome!

Most students of University of Nigeria, Nsukka UNN are required to offered “COS201 – Computer Programming I” as a major, required ancillary or elective course. The programming language use for the course is Java. You need to understand algorithm development and as well as programming in other to pass the course.

For you to understand programming or algorithm development, you need to know those operations that a computer can perform. The operations a computer can perform are contained in an algorithm or a programme.

When solving a problem, an algorithm, computer or a computer programme carries some basic operations (actions) in other to solve the problem. The operations (actions) are called basic operations because a typical computer is expected to carry out these operations. Therefore it is the possible or average (minimum) operations an average computer is expected to carry-out.

A computer algorithm is one that expresses the method of solution to a problem in terms of only those operations which the computer can perform.

A computer programme (or just a programme) is a sequence of instructions that a computer can interpret and execute.

An instruction is a line(s) of code(s) written as part of a computer program.

A code is the symbolic arrangement of data or instructions in a computer program or the set of such instructions.

To Interpret and execute in programming simply means to understand and perform and action (operation) by a computer.

The operations that a computer can perform while solving a problem are:

  1. Input Operation
  2. Output Operation
  3. Arithmetic Operation
  4. Logical Operation
  5. Transfer of Control Operation
  6. Assignment Operation
  7. Termination Operation.

Any average computer, small algorithm or programme must perform at least one of the aforementioned operations in other to solve any problem. These operations will let you understand how computer work and manipulate, treat or handle data in other to give the right result.
Before I dive into explaining what each of the above operations are, let us take a look at how we will be representing or describing memory in this tutorial/lesson.

Memory Representation:

The following diagram shows the shapes I will be using (Most people use it also) to describe/represent computer memory e.g. 1GB (One Giga Byte) of RAM, Hard Disc Drive etc.



Memory is not just like empty cylinder, rectangle or box as shown, it is for simplicity purpose only. Memory has several locations (called Segments, Sectors or locations) within it. However each of this segment can also be further be spitted into smaller addressable locations which has many portions/locations.
The memory in the diagram above has being spitted as shown in the diagram below.





These smaller locations are being created usually when some of the above operations are carried out (executed) by the computer. The open segment above shows that the memory still continue or what was shown is just part/portion of the memory.

The above memory has sixteen (16) locations and four (4) segments. Though in programming and computer science, specialists like you normally count the number of memory locations or segment by starting from zero (0).
The counting in the above memory started from one (1) for simplicity sake. The diagram should look like this instead:


Of course I did not change any thing except the figure. Therefore their still sixteen (16) locations and four (4) segments. Also note that the counting method is for simplicity sake, why? Because the counting is (suppose) to be in binary. so that in binary it may look like the following:0 = 0000000000000000, 1 = 0000000000000001, 2 = 0000000000000010, 3 = 0000000000000011, …, 15 = 1111111111111111.Don’t panic we are not going to do such thing here.
This just to show what is going on. Where you will treat binary and carefully - not to get drawn - swim into it deeply, is when we start information or data representation at hardware level known as computer architecture. Our discussion here concerns computer software (programming).

It is now time to discuss the basics computer operations one after the other.

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