What follows is a quick review of all the material covered in the class, with a little explanation of why it was covered.

## Variables and types

Essential to any program is the ability to retain values, to store calculations in memory and retrieve from memory what has been stored. Values are identified by names (unless we’re using an array, in which case values are identified by a name plus a position). These named values are called variables, and at least in C++, each variable has a type. Types are useful so that we can treat the string “11” differently than we treat the integer 11. If we have two strings, “11” and “22”, and they are “added” together, we get another string: “1122”. On the other hand, adding the integers 11 and 22 obviously gives us 33. Thus, the type of a value determines how it behaves in various operations. Also, the type determines how much space in memory is needed to store the value: integers typically require 4 bytes, while a double value (decimal number) typically requires 8 bytes.

## Arithmetic

Once we learned how to use variables, and we learned about some basic arithemetic functions and other mathematical functions, we could perform mathematical operations. However, the inputs to these functions should come from the user of the program, and not be hard-coded into the source code. Thus, some type of input mechanism was needed. Likewise, the results of the operations should be shown back to the user, so some type of output mechanism was needed. We used cin and cout for input and output (respectively). Obviously, there are other ways to get input: from the mouse, from a touchscreen, etc. And there are other ways to give output: 2D graphics, 3D graphics, sound, etc. cin and cout are very simple: input via the keyboard, output via the screen in text format.

## Conditionals

Next, we saw that only a limited range of calculations can be performed with variables and mathematical functions. Most interesting programs exhibit different behavior depending on context or properties of the world (obtained via input from the user). That is, most programs have conditionals littered throughout. A conditional is a statement of the form “if XYZ is true, do this; otherwise, do that.” With conditionals, our programs can pursue one or more of several possible paths of execution, thus making the program more flexible and responsive to user input.

## Loops

The final piece of the computational puzzle is loops. Only by adding loops to our repertoire can we perform computations repeatedly until some condition is met (such as successive approximation problems). Also, a program with a user-input loop is a fully interactive program: the user can have a “conversation” with it that lasts as long as the user wishes it to last. Most programs that we use every day have this looped conversational mode. Your text editor, your web browser, etc. all sit in some loop, waiting for your input. And, as it happens, only by adding loops do we get the full power of computation, the ability to solve any problem that can be solved by a computer.

## Functions

Functions were introduced so that we can keep our sanity. Simply put, a function is a chunk of code with a name. That’s convenient because we can refer to that chunk of code by its name, and avoid resorting to copying-pasting code. For example, the sqrt() function (square root) is presumably somewhat complicated, and not something we want to copy-paste every time we need to calculate a square root. Because it’s a function, we can just refer to it by name, essentially writing in our code, “Hey sqrt() function, go calculate the square root of this number and give me back the result.” Another way of looking at functions is delegation: your main code delegates the minor tasks to other functions so that your main code is not required to do all the work. A final way of looking at functions is modularization: each function should solve a small problem, a problem isolated from the greater program. Each function only knows how to do one thing (ideally), and is not concerned with facts like when it is used or why it is used (in what context). The sqrt() function performs the same calculations regardless of when or why it is used. So, the code that makes up the sqrt() function will not make any references to any greater context, will not make reference to other variables or user input or output. By breaking our code into isolated functions, we have introduced modularity (separation of concerns, ability to easily replace modules, etc.).

One seemingly innocuous feature of C++ is the distinction between call-by-value and call-by-reference. This distinction relates to how functions receive their inputs and is only seemingly innocuous because the distinction necessitates the use of pointers, which is a topic that we’ll broach later. Call-by-value is the “default” case. A function written in a normal fashion receives a copy of its inputs’ values:

In this example, a and b inside the function printSum() have the values 4 and 10, but a and b are distinct variables from x and y. Variables are distinct if they do not share the same memory locations. So, a sits in a different place in memory than does x. When the function is called, x’s value is copied into a. Likewise for y and b. This is call-by-value, the default situation. One effect of call-by-value in this code is that the value of x does not change even though the value of a did change.

Now consider the following modified example:

The only change is the introduction of & before a and before b in the function header. But that change turns a call-by-value function into a call-by-reference function. Now, x and a are the same variable (they store their data in the same locations in memory); likewise, y and b are the same variable. So, the effect is that x is modified, because a is modified.

We use call-by-reference when we want a function to “return” several values rather than just one. In this case, the “reference parameters” to the function will be used to hold results. Also, call-by-reference can be more efficient because values will not be copied (values may be very large, such as large strings).

How this relates to pointers will be discussed shortly.

## Recursion

Next we learned about recursion. Recursion is a function calling itself, so clearly we can’t talk about recursion without first talking about functions. Recursion was introduced because some problems can be solved more “cleanly” with recursive procedures rather than non-recursive (iterative) procedures. For example, one of the fastest “sorting algorithms” (“quick sort”) is recursive: given a list, it breaks the list into two parts, and then sorts the two smaller lists. So the “quick sort” function performs “quick sort” on two smaller lists. This is the divide-and-conquer technique that is often so effective (in militaristic situations and programming). Coding divide-and-conquer techniques without using recursion is a big mess.

Interestingly, some programming languages avoid iteration (e.g. while() loops and for() loops) and instead use recursion to accomplish the same effect. In C++’s perspective, recursion is a nice feature, when you need it.

## Arrays

Now, changing subjects, consider a program that asks the user to provide some numbers, and then calculates the mean, variance, etc. of the numbers. How many numbers will the user provide? The program does not know this. And, as it happens, the variance and some other statistical properties of a list of numbers cannot be calculated “as you go,” as a stream. Rather, calculating the variance requires calculating the mean (which can be done “as you go”), then looking back at every number again and measuring how far away it is from the mean. So variance cannot be calculated without having “all the numbers all at once” in some type of collection. Arrays are one way to collect these numbers.

An array is a single variable name (e.g. vals or xs or numbers) that has lots of values inside. To refer to each particular value, we use a position or index (starting at 0). So the fifth element in the array vals is at position 4, and can be identified by the syntax vals[4].

Arrays are necessary for only one reason: C++ does not allow variables to be created “on the fly.” That is, we have no way, in C++, to write code that introduces a variable called, say, vals4, while the program is running; all variables must be created when the program is written, and those variables are written in stone, so to speak. C++ allows us to reserve more memory for a single array variable, if needed, but we cannot introduce new variables.

This restriction is almost splitting hairs: who cares if new variables can be introduced or not? We get the same power by using arrays. This much is true, but because new variables cannot be introduced, we are forced to use and understand pointers.

## Pointers

The inability to introduce new variables is an effect of the inability to write code that reasons about variables. There is no way, in C++, to write code that asks “is this variable named ‘x’?” or that can “change this variable’s name to ‘y’” or “introduce a new variable called ‘valsX’ where X is the next available number” or “give this function the variable named ‘a’.” We have no way of talking about variables; in particular, we cannot refer to their names.

But a variable name is a unique identifier for a value. If we could write code that talks about variable names, we could write code like “give this function the variable named ‘a’,” and that code would make perfect sense because there could only be one variable named ‘a’ (disregarding variable “scope”). But we cannot do this, so how does code uniquely identify a variable?

To be clear, most code does not need to uniquely identify a variable. The sqrt() function does not care where its input comes from, it simply cares what is the value of the input. So we use sqrt() in a call-by-value situation, just giving the values of the inputs to the function. However, other functions that use call-by-reference need to know which variable is being given to the function, not its value (the value may not even be used by the function; it may only use the variable to assign it a value). C++ provides the call-by-reference syntax (prepending the & to the variable name) to allow us to link two distinct names to the same variable, in the context of calling a function.

However, there are other circumstances in which we want to refer to a variable. For example, in a linked list, each “node” links to another node. Say we create two nodes, node1 and node2. We have no way of saying, “node1 should link to the variable called node2.” So how to do link the nodes? How does the variable node1 ever “get to” or refer to the variable node2 if not by its name?

Since every variable lives in memory somewhere, a variable’s memory location is a unique identifier. And in C++, we can refer to memory locations. We use pointers to do that. So, node1 can remember the memory location, i.e. the pointer to, node2, and never know the name of node2. The issue of uniquely referring to variables has been resolved. It only required these cringe-worthy pointers to do so!

(Coming soon: discussion of “classes” and object-oriented programming, and “template meta-programming”)

It turns out that an eerie type of chaos can lurk just behind a façade of order – and yet, deep inside the chaos lurks an even eerier type of order. – Douglas Hofstadter, Metamagical Themas