IST 140Introduction to Application Development

3 credits · Information Sciences and Technology · Penn State

A first course in concepts and skills for application development. Math 22 is recommended as preparation for IST 140 . This is a first course in application development. Applications are computer programs developed to support human activity in enterprise and other social contexts. Examples of applications might include programs to help run a business, manage personal information, or provide entertainment. The emphasis of this course is on learning to translate practical problems through domain analysis into software applications usable in a human or organizational context. It will focus on the knowledge needed to create applications that use high level programming languages, combining original code with existing code libraries and application programming interfaces (APIs). Students in this course will learn application development concepts including problem solving using computer programming; how to recognize the need for different types of data and how to use data of different types to represent an application's information; application testing and debugging; basic computer organization; and the basics of operating systems. This is a hands-on, practical course designed for students without prior computer programming experience who will use computer languages and tools to develop applications in their later courses and future careers.