Chapter 1 (pp. 1–16) of Computer Science I.

Topics

Section	Page	Content
Problem Solving	2	Computers automate solutions; humans solve problems.
Computing Basics	4	What a program/computer does at a basic level.
Basic Program Structure	5	Anatomy of a program.
Syntax Rules & Pseudocode	12	Pseudocode conventions used through the core.
Documentation, Comments, and Coding Style	14	Readability and style discipline.

Key Idea

Computers do not solve problems — they automate solutions at scale. CS1 is about problem solving; syntax is secondary. This chapter sets up the pseudocode used across the core concepts before the C / Java / PHP parts make it concrete.

Examples

Anatomy of a program

read radius
area ← 3.14159 × radius × radius
print area

Input → process → output: the skeleton of nearly every program.

Pseudocode carries intent

// Goal: greet the user by name
read name
print "Hello, " + name

The comment states the goal; the steps below carry it out.

In Java

double radius = in.nextDouble();
double area = 3.14159 * radius * radius;
System.out.println(area);

See the Java part for the full language treatment.

Citations

[1] Computer Science I, Ch. 1, pp. 1–16.