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Computer Science I

An open CS1 textbook that teaches concepts before syntax — a language-agnostic core, then the same ideas rebuilt in C, Java, and PHP.

Author Chris Bourke, UNL Version 1.3.6 (2018) License CC BY-SA 4.0 Pages 647

Core Concepts — language-agnostic

Problem solving, computing basics, program structure, and pseudocode conventions.

Control flow, variables, types, operators, basic I/O, and debugging fundamentals.

Logical operators, if / if-else / if-else-if statements, and the ternary operator.

While, for, do-while, and foreach loops; nesting, infinite loops, and loop equivalency.

Defining and using functions; call by value/reference, overloading, variable args, defaults.

Defensive programming versus exception-based error handling strategies.

Arrays, static vs dynamic memory, shallow/deep copies, multidimensional arrays, collections.

String basic operations, comparisons, and tokenizing.

Processing files — paths, error handling, buffering, and binary vs text files.

Objects, data visibility, accessors/mutators, constructors, composition, design principles.

Writing recursive functions, tail recursion, avoiding recursion, and memoization.

Linear/binary search, selection/insertion/quick/merge sort, comparators, and stability.

Language Parts

Part I — CS1 concepts in C, emphasizing pointers, manual memory, structs, and error codes.

Part II — CS1 concepts in Java, emphasizing objects, exceptions, equals/hashCode, and lambdas.

Part III — CS1 concepts in PHP, emphasizing type juggling, associative arrays, and web-oriented I/O.