COMPUTER SCIENCE 101
Hi! this is my first blog I've ever created. i would like to apologize first for the boredom of the blog and its boring page design.
However, computer science is actually a vast knowledge worth learning and therefore, I would dedicate this blog to anyone who wanted to know about what computer science can offer you in the future and even now.
First things first, computer science is the study of the principle of computer and how it actually works. During the early 1900s, the world had experienced the first and the second world war. Along with it, came a piece of technology called the Enigma, this machine was used by intelligents and armies to encrypt codes and messages that are sent through radio signals in order to understand their enemies next move. This enigma machine was the first modern computer ever created and developed by the germans to encrypt codes. However, there are many others who had actually invented machines that carries out almost the same kind of technology. One of the earliest technology such as this is the calculator. Calculator is the earliest piece of technology after the abacus ever invented that is to solve arithmetic problems such as the basic mathematical operations faced in our daily life. Thomas de Colmar was the first to invent such calculators that is known as the arithmometer and the stepped reckoner invented by Gottfried Liebniz.
THE ENIGMA USED BY THE GERMAN
Well, that is all for the history class, now back to the basics of computer science.
Computer Science are widely connected to Information Technology (IT). IT is defined as the use of computer hardware and software to store, retrieve and manipulate data. I know, it's a boring topic talking about IT but it is what we do. From posting this blog to typing the search engine on Google Chrome for research and even downloading files and musics from websites, well there you go, that is INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY. There are of course its pros and cons. One of its pros is that it eases a certain aspect of our lives that is it helps us to be aware of what is happening around the world. This is because IT is widely used through websites such as this blog and online newspaper, e-book and the social networks and applications(apps) like the facebook, instagram and even the wikipedia.
Next, in this 21st century it is kind of obvious that there are many fields of work and careers that uses IT such as the governments which creates websites and portals for the nation in order to inform true facts and many applications such as the websites to apply for local universities and for other government servants who needs to update their positions or to get information regarding their work can also be done here.
Furthermore, in the medical fields, IT is widely used for the doctors and other professionals to communicate with other professionals from separate hospitals or clinics or even from another country. This is to give the best treatment to the patients who are facing certain disease that are rare to a certain country or as to consult others as to experiment new techniques to conduct the treatment. Cancer and organ transplant is one of the examples of consultations used by health care professionals in carrying out operations. Such application is known as medline and telemedicine.
Education is not left behind in this field, it is best known that computers has been a necessity for youngsters to proceed with their life. Students today uses IT as to do research and to connect through the educational websites and portals suggested by their teachers and other educators and administrators whom had created the websites for the school to keep the information of everyone who had enrolled themselves in that particular school or college. However there are other field of work that uses IT in their daily job such as in manufacturing products that uses many types of tools and specific softwares and hardwares to create a product and producing maximum amount of product over a short period of time is all down to one reason and that is IT and Computer Science.
Alright, so now comes the fun part! (super exciting). First in order to know what is Computer Science
we must first understand that there are many types of computers. There are 5 types of computers known as the supercomputer, mainframes, personal computers, mobile devices and computers and finally the embedded computers. Embedded computers are actually a pretty simple type of computer that we have been using all this time. (no jokes). Embedded computers are commonly computers or devices that carries out a specific task such devices are used to improve a certain system such as in the manufacturing field. the embedded computer is used to maximize the production rate and are programmed to carry out work that are too heavy and exhaustive for us or even beyond our ability. This is also applied in the medical field. The x-ray machine and the MRI scanner is one of the examples of embedded computers used to see bone structures and the organs for the medical professionals to determine the problem faced by a patient. Next, the supercomputers. Well as described it is a huge computers that occupies almost a full room of a big room. Something like your lab in schools or an office. Supercomputers are the fastest, most powerful and expensive computers commonly used in complex and very sophisticated jobs such as nuclear research, searching weather patterns or even in search of petroleum underground. Supercomputers are the fastest among all the other types of computers. The fastest supercomputer are known to process billions of information and instructions in a second. Next comes the mainframes. Mainframe is actually a powerful computer that can handle hundreds or thousands of connected users simultaneously and it also stores a humongous amount of data, information and instructions which is commonly used in insurance companies to store their customers information. Next, is the personal computers commonly known as our desktop and notebooks. Lastly, as we all know it, the mobile computer and devices which are handy and ( as you know it) mobile. Mobile computer and devices are like smartphones and cameras etc.
Moving on, we are going to go to computer systems which is where all the challenges begins. Computer just like us has its own language and thy are known to us as numbers. The way computers process instructions are through codes which is also known as numbering systems. There are 3 types of numbering system that these computer can read which are the binary numbers, hexadecimals and decimals. In mathematics binary and hexadecimals are a way of representing numbers as we know which are the decimal numbers ( numbers from 0 to 9). However,in computers they are a way of representing data. Our computers understands binary numbers which are number 1 and 0. These binary numbers are commonly used in coding and in processing instructions, binary numbers are the source in which everything is processed.
There are 3 types of coding system known as the American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII),EBCDIC, and the Unicode.
There are 2 types of ASCII coding system known as the ASCII code and the Extended ASCII code. The difference is that ASCII coding schemes used to have 7 bits which can only represents 128 characters. Pretty small number of characters. No idea what else that people like me can do with just 128 characters on my keyboard and so they extended the codes and added one more bit into the code which increases the numbers into 256 characters. ( By the way, 8 bits = 1 Byte) Bits is a unit of data which is eventually the smallest unit and Bytes are a set of 8 bits grouped together to represent a character. Next, comes the EBCDIC codes. They are the same as ASCII with the 256 characters and 8 bits of data used. EBCDIC were used in the IBM mainframe and considered to be an obsolete coding system but these 2 coding schemes are only sufficient to represent the European and most of Western countries characters but not for other parts and language. Therefore, there is another type of coding scheme introduced to us which we are using right now on our laptops and other electronic gadgets known as the Unicode. Instead of using 8 bits of data, Unicode uses 16 bits of data which is larger than the other 2 coding schemes which in total represents 65536 characters which can represent all the world's languages. Sound super awesome right. In conclusion, Unicode is now widely used in all of our laptops and personal computers.
Back to our topic, THE most popular topic in computer science known as Programming. Programming is a process that leads from an original formulation on computing problems to executable computer programs. Programming involves activities such as analysis, developing understanding,generating understanding and algorithms, verification of requirements of algorithms including their correctness and resources consumption and implementation of algorithms in a target programming language. Basically, the purpose of programming is to find and write instructions that will help us solve a given problem automatically.
In history, programming existed longer than we thought, that is during 1206 AD when the automata of Al- Jazari were programmable to play various rhythms and drum patterns. Next, the first computer program was generally dated in 1843 where a mathematician named Ada Lovelace published an algorithm of Bernoulli numbers.
Next, we are going to talk about software. What exactly is software? It is a series of instructions that tells the computer what task to perform and how to perform it. Well there are 2 types of software known as the proprietary software and the open source software. There is however a slight difference between these software.
Proprietary software are software licensed under exclusive legal right of the copyright holder. They are also known as a closed source software developed by corporations and sold for profit by these companies and the source code is not accessible by the users.
Going to open source software, as the name was given, the open source software are free and the source code is provided for use, modification and can be redistributed.
Now that we know that there are 2 types of software, lets go to its system. System software is divided into 2 categories known as the operating system and utility systems.
Operating systems. Sounds familiar? yes, it is what we usually called OS. This term will be used for the rest of the blog. Nothing much about this operating system that we know about but eventually, there is a lot to talk about. OS is actually a set of programs containing instructions that work together to coordinate all the activities among computer hardware resources. I know it might sounded weird but it is what it is. In this case, I am referring to how the computer works. OS actually governs the system by telling or instructing the computer ( hardware ) what to do next. There are 3 types of OS. Namely, Stand-Alone OS, Server OS, Mobile OS.
A Stand-Alone OS is a complete operating system that works on desktops, laptops, and some tablets. There are some example of Stand-Alone OS. In the Proprietary category there is Windows XP, Windows 10, Windows 8, Mac OS X and UNIX. There is also an open source stand-alone OS known as Linux.
Server OS are designed specifically to support a network and it resides on a server. Here are some examples. In the open source category we have Linux and in the proprietary category we have Windows Server, Mac OS X Server and UNIX.
Mobile OS however resides on a ROM (Read-Only-Memory) chip in a mobile or consumer electronic device. There are a few examples of mobile OS such as Apple iOS, Windows phone on the proprietary category and we have Android and Symbian OS in the open source category.
Among the things that OS does are start and shut down a computer, provide a user interface, manage programs, manage memory, schedule jobs and configure devices, establish internet connections, monitor performance and provide file management and other utilities, control a network and administer security.
