Computer Engineering & C++: Electronics and Low Level Coding

Explore boolean algebra and basic boolean operators, including and, or, not, truth tables, and how they map to digital logic gates and circuits.

Learn how transistors act as solid-state switches and form efficient logic gates. Grasp basic electronics, including current, voltage, DC power, and passive and active components.

Explore how resistance, capacitance, and inductance shape impedance and timing in circuits, and how resistors, capacitors, inductors, and switches enable on/off logic in hardware.

Explore capacitors as energy tanks that store charge in an electric field, and learn how a resistor-capacitor circuit charges over time, shaping current and smoothing voltage.

Explore how inductors store energy in a magnetic field and resist changes in current, filtering and stabilizing voltages on motherboards to protect CPUs from surges.

Explore how power consumption follows resistance, capacitance, and inductance, and how energy, joules, and power in watts relate by p = v i. See transistors as active switches and amplifiers that enable modern digital logic, and note that mosfet and cmos will be covered in upcoming lectures.

Learn how mosfets operate as controllable switches using n-channel and p-channel configurations, with gate-source control and cmos designs that reduce power loss and enable fast digital logic.

Explore how CMOS uses complementary PMOS and NMOS transistors to create power efficient inverters and basic gates, including and gates, forming the building blocks of modern CPUs and microcontrollers.

Explore logic circuits, focusing on combinational circuits driven by current inputs, sequential circuits with memory, and how binary values map to voltage levels with active high and low signaling.

Explore binary addition of n-bit numbers using half adders and full adders, derive truth tables for sum and carry, and reveal xor-based sum relations.

Learn how C++ manages code flow with explicit variable declarations in a strongly typed language, and compare formatting styles like Kernighan and Ritchie and Allman to enhance readability and maintainability.

Explore how expressions in C++ combine operators and operands to produce values, and distinguish left values from right values and rvalues in assignments, statements, and the comma operator.

Discover how Cplusplus enforces strict type rules through declarations and initializations, explore braces initialization for safety, and compare local and global variables to optimize memory.

Learn how enumerations in C++ create named constants mapped to specific values, with default zero-based numbering and custom assignments like FTP 21 and HTTP 80, improving readability and safety.

Master c++ literals—integers, floating points, and nondecimal forms (hex, octal, binary)—and use iomanip stream manipulators to format output, while mastering pointers, null pointers, consts, address-of, dereference, and arrays.

Explore how namespaces in C++ group related functions, variables, and types to prevent naming conflicts and improve code organization, using directives and fully qualified names.

Define and apply variable scope in C++ by exploring global, file, function, block, and static scopes; explain extern, header files, and linking to resolve definitions.

Explore arithmetic operators in Cplusplus and how precedence and associativity control evaluation, learn addition, subtraction, multiplication, division (including integer and floating-point) and modulus.

Explore prefix and postfix increment and decrement operators, applied to integers, floating point numbers, and pointers, with immediate versus original effects. Highlight loops, conditionals, array indexing, and pointer navigation.

Learn to control program flow in C++ using if, else, and switch statements, plus the ternary operator, with examples on conditions, comparisons, and preventing assignment errors.

Master loops in C++ by exploring for loops, infinite loops, and break and continue control. Apply loops to arrays and input, and master loop structure and termination.

Create a simple command-line calculator in C++ by parsing command-line arguments, validating a single-character operator, and performing +, -, *, / with division-by-zero checks and result output.

Explore plain old data classes, or pods, as simple C++ containers with structured members. Learn to declare, access via dot operator, and understand memory layout, sequential storage, and alignment.

Learn how unions share memory across members for interpretation and cross-architecture marshalling, where the largest member sets size and the compiler cannot track the active interpretation, so use is discouraged.

Learn encapsulation in C++ by binding data with methods and information hiding, illustrated by a date example with an add year method.

Explore access controls in C++ by encapsulating private members with public set and get methods, and enforcing year validity (>= 2019) in a date class.

Compare class and struct with respect to default access controls, implement encapsulation with get and add methods, and use a ternary operator to enforce year rules and update the clock.

Explore constructors as methods with no return type, whose name matches the class, initializing a clock with a year input and defaulting bad input to 2019, with exceptions covered later.

Define a class destructor in C++ as an object's cleanup function invoked automatically before destruction; default destructors do nothing, while custom ones release file handlers, sockets, and dynamic objects.

Explore four ways to initialize built-in types in C++, including assignment, function-call style, constructor syntax, and brace-list initialization introduced in C++11, with examples on arrays and pointers.

Examine C++ pointers for direct memory access, including declaring and initializing pointers, stack and free-store allocation, dereferencing, and pointer arithmetic, with notes on void pointers and 32-bit vs 64-bit.

Learn the two kinds of reference types, pointers and references, and how to declare, address, and dereference them in C++, including void pointers, std::byte pointers, null pointers, and printing addresses.

Learn how the dereference operator, a unary operator, accesses the object a pointer refers to and how it contrasts with the address-of operator, including pointer declaration with an asterisk.

Explore how pointers and arrays relate, showing how arrays decay to pointers, access elements with pointer arithmetic and the arrow operator, and pass arrays with their length to functions.

Learn how null pointers protect memory by ensuring pointers reference valid addresses and how to safely obtain, initialize, and check pointers with the address-of operator and nullptr.

Explore pointer arithmetic in c++, where typed pointers access memory, dereference values, and move through arrays; understand postfix increments and how pointers differ from arrays.

Understand how arrays go out of bounds and how pointer arithmetic can access unallocated memory. Learn safe deallocation practices, avoid returning raw pointers, and consider smart pointers for ownership.

Explore typed and void pointers, constness, and casts in C++ by examining memory access rules, const pointers, and const_cast usage with strings and malloc.

Explore how C++ allocates memory with the new and delete operators, initializes built-in and custom types, calls destructors on delete, and returns memory to the free store with nullptr checks.

Allocate memory as arrays with the new operator, create multiple objects, access them via pointer arithmetic or indexing, and delete with the proper delete version to invoke destructors, handling bad_alloc.

Explore memory lifetime managed by new and delete, the risks of dangling pointers, and how RAII with smart pointers and destructors safeguards allocated memory.

Examine the standard template library's containers, especially arrays and vectors, and how their random access, contiguous memory, and iterators enable safe, compile-time sized arrays and dynamic collections.