Introduction to Programming Workshop

Opening of the Workshop

The workshop was hosted by ACM-Women and ACM in order to inculcate the basic C programming concepts to the fresh programmers. The instructor was Aadil Jaleel Choudhry, the former ACM president and alumnus from SEECS. It was a two day workshop covering the basic C concepts, tackling the queries from the students and coaching tips and tricks for efficient coding.

A good number of freshmen students, experiencing programming for the very first time, attended the event and participated actively. The workshop was conducted under the supervision of the assigned ACM-W chairs, vice-chairs and executives. The editorial team covered the event for the post event report on the workshop.

Day 1

Day one started with an encouraging video motivating the students to learn coding and the vast avenues the field of computer software programming opens for them once they get the gist of it. The video featured renowned software programmers, application builders and software house owners like, Mark Zuckerberg- the co-founder of the social networking website Facebook, Drew Housten- the founder of Dropbox, and many more. The emphasis was laid on the core practices and ideas one needs to master for proficient coding and the future aspects of programming.

Following the video session was a brief talk about distinguished technology incubators like Plan 9 and NUST; enlightening the students about the bright prospects of good programming.

An introduction to C language and its founders was conveyed to the learners. The topics covered on day one were:

• Logic Building
• Logic vs. Syntax
• Memory Overview
• Program Execution

Day 2

Day two of the workshop observed the same majority of students as day one and started off with a basic overview of what was discussed on day one.

The topics covered were:

• Problem Solving
• Library Functions
• Loops
• Error Handling
• Syntax Errors
• Break Point

The students were provided with the course material and code to practice what was learned. In the end they were given links to beneficial resources online and in print. The use of online tutorials like thenewboston tutorials and MSDN (Microsoft Developer Network) were promoted. Moreover, websites and forums like stackoverflow.com and cpluplus.com were also mentioned for help while programming.

The second day ended with the distribution of certificates among the students taking the workshop.

Conclusion

The workshop was an overall success and instructor was able to cover all the aimed topics in the given short span of time. The participants were positive they got the required guidance from the coach.