Session 4 Preparation — Videos, Reading and Quizzes

Videos and Reading:

All of the following are required except items labeled Optional are, well, optional (i.e., things that may be interesting but do not directly pertain to your success in this course).

1. Thinking Like a Computer: Control Flow
   • Video [3:04 minutes]
   • Code [3:04 minutes]
2. Thinking Like a Computer: Namespaces, Parameters, and Returns
   • Video [9:36 minutes]
   • Code [3:04 minutes]
3. Conditionals: IF and IF-ELSE and IF-ELIF-ELIF...-ELSE statements
   • Online reading: Sections 5.1 through 5.10
     of How to Think Like a Computer Scientist: Learning with Python 3 by Peter Wentworth, Jeffrey Elkner, Allen B. Downey, and Chris Meyers. From the Open Book Project.
4. The Accumulator Pattern (revisited)
   • Video [9:36 minutes]
5. Unit Testing
   1. Read the description of Unit Testing shown to the right, taken from the Unit Testing chapter of Software Testing Fundamentals.
   2. Read the question and first answer from this question on Stack Overflow. (Note: this link will open in a new tab or window, not inside this window.)
6. Test-First Programming
   • First popularized as an Extreme Programming Rule: Code the Unit Test First. (Read the page, but you do not have to follow its links to other pages.)
   • Optional reading: Widely used in Agile Software Development Processes, as described at length in this optional article on Test-First Programming from the web site for the Agile management tool called VersionOne.
7. Optional: First Do a Concrete Example By Hand

   This video works through an example of a technique that you will use often.