Final Exam Topics

The exam is open book and open notes and you are free to use a calculator or computer except for searching/chatting on the Internet. The exam is not cumulative -- it only covers the material since the midterm with the addition of C# (i.e. all of the programming languages, C#, Scheme, Prolog, PHP, JavaScript). It does not include Galileo/Arduino programming.

Be prepared to write snippets of code, give the output of a snippet of code, find bugs in code, write a solution in multiple languages, analyze the major differences between different programming languages including the strengths and weaknesses of one approach to another.

General Programming Languages Questions

• Programming paradigms
  • Differences between Procedural, Object-Oriented, Functional, Logic, Client/Server
• Concept of the virtual machine
• Garbage collection, what it is, where it would be needed

Java

• The exam will assume you are knowledgeable with Java and may pose a question in terms of Java as a reference
• Benefits of Lambda Expressions in Java 8

.NET

• If someone asks you, should be able to tell someone what it is
• Relationship between OS, CLR, Base Classes, Programming Languages
• How the architecture supports goals of robustness, multiple programming languages, multiple platforms
• What is really happening when you compile and run a C# or .NET program

C#

• Syntax for iteration, control structures, defining variables, methods, classes, etc.
• Similarities with Java
• Passing parameters by reference vs. pass by value
  • explicit ref or out required
• Concept of automatic boxing and unboxing
  • everything is an object, but done efficiently
• Defining classes
  • Explicit virtual, override
• Concept of a delegate, so we can pass in a function as an argument
• Creating a GUI application with Windows Forms
• Concept and difference creating a GUI application with XAML/WPF

Scheme

• Atoms vs. lists
• Syntax for invoking functions, defining functions, let, cond, equal, car, cdr, cons, quote, '
• Common functions like length, reverse, etc.
• Eval, apply
• Passing, returning functions as values
• Be prepared to write some recursive function to process lists in some way

Prolog

• Understand basic predicate calculus and propositional logic
• Representing facts and rules, using AND (,) and OR (;)
• Binding values to variables
• Writing queries
• Working with lists, head and tail
• How prolog handles backtracking
• Define some knowledge, rules to search it, and queries using the rules

CGI and HTML

• Basic HTML, including FORM tag, fields for hidden, text, textarea, submit
• Model of computation; what happens when a HTML page invokes a CGI program, where the program is run and how data is returned to the browser
• Difference between GET and POST

PHP

• Weakly typed, how PHP performs implicit type conversion
• Syntax for iteration, control structures, defining variables, methods, classes, concatenation, etc.
• Classes
  • Defining instance variables
  • Using this
  • Everything public
• Passing parameters by reference vs. pass by value
  • Default behavior when passing objects
  • Related:  what happens when one object is assigned to another
  • Different behavior with PHP 4 vs. PHP 5, issues in migration
• What happens with $$var or $var()
• How to pass parameters between a web page and PHP script
• Arrays
  • Append to end with $a[]=val;  
  • Index by string or by integer
  • Common functions such as count
  • Using foreach on an array
• Common functions such as print_r, explode, implode, trim, substr, etc.
• Generating HTML from PHP
• Database access in PHP (be able to read some code that might deal with a DB)

JavaScript

• You may be asked how JavaScript code would work or to write a few lines of JavaScript or given some JavaScript and asked to modify it
• Adding to a HTML file
• Basics on vars, operators, control statements
• Weak typing
• Scoping - global and function scope; static; no block scope
• Using arrays
• Creating objects
• Using the prototype property
• Defining custom objects and inheritance
• Accessing/modifying elements on a HTML page
• JavaScript event handlers
• AJAX and the XHR object
• jQuery