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Computer programming languages Object-oriented programming languages, such as Java, allow computer systems and computer programs to be conceptualised and worked with in a flexible and powerful way. At the processor level (i.e. machine code languages) many thousands (sometimes hundreds of thousands) of instructions must be executed in any useful piece of software, but high-level languages that are more suited to human expression are used so we have to write orders of magnitude fewer ‘instructions’. With object-oriented programming languages and their class libraries, by reusing or extending what is in the libraries we write even fewer instructions that with traditional high level programming languages such as Pascal. Writing simple pieces of software can be straightforward – even easy, and fun. However, when pieces of software become large or have to fit into a complicated system, complexity becomes hard to deal with. In an introductory course like this module, the examples will often be small and so not representative of full software development. However, occasionally you may be asked to examine more complex software. Indeed, as you explore Java and its classes you will have to get used to trying to learn about pieces of a whole that nobody can fully understand. This is what makes software development both hard and exciting! A fundamental problem in software development is making a match between the ‘declarative’ knowledge that people have (i.e. knowing what behaviour is required of a system) to the ‘procedural’ knowledge of the computer (i.e. knowing how to do something). The development of techniques to assist the translation between declarative and procedural knowledge is one of the major advances in the software industry in the last twenty years or so. Object technology has made a significant contribution here. It encourages a declarative approach using procedural techniques for the detail of how to implement behaviour.
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