Music composed by computers has always been lacking in "musical" qualities: mood, emotional expression and a sense of purposefulness or goal. A musical expert system, called EMOTER, is the first attempt to address these important musical aspects. EMOTER receives as input a list of moods (e.g., happy, lively) and generates melodic passages intended to evoke those moods in an organized, coherent fashion. EMOTER composes the basic units of music called phrases. The program uses the mood-specification from a theory due to Deryck Cooke to derive a few motifs (very primitive melodic material) exemplifying the moods and computes a number of musical attributes to guide its compositional choices. A theory of emotion due to Leonard Meyer further helps plan the phrase. The theory states that an emotional response is stimulated in a listener when expectations about the progression of the music are first established and then inhibited (with the understanding that the expectations will eventually be fulfilled). A melodic passage is composed using the selected motifs, attributes and emotional theory to create a "skeletal" phrase. This is embellished and developed (also using the attributes and theory) to flesh-out the bare melodic material into a passage that embodies the musical characteristics of the mood-specification. Results with EMOTER are excellent. Many musical phrases comparable to music of normal composers are generated from a single mood-specification. More theory is needed, however, before the full complexities of human-composed music are sufficiently captured in code for EMOTER to pass a Turing test in music composition. / Master of Science

The psychological characteristics of programmers are believed to be important determinants of programming productivity. However, little evidence is available to support this contention. This investigation, motivated by the lack of such evidence, was concerned with determining the influence of the programmer's cognitive complexity (differentiation and integration) and experience on comprehending and modifying programs of different levels of complexity. Data were collected from ninty-three graduate and undergraduate students in a classroom experimental setting. In the first phase of the experiment, a background questionnaire was administered in order to collect experience and other demographic information. Also, a domain-specific Role Construct Repertory (REP) Test was administered to collect cognitive complexity information. In the second phase, the subjects were randomly assigned to either the program comprehension group or to the program modification group. Both groups used two COBOL programs of differing levels of complexity to do comprehension and modification exercises. Three sets of hypotheses were tested. The first set of hypotheses was designed to evaluate the direction and strength of the relationship between cognitive complexity and program comprehension and modification. The second set of hypotheses was designed to evaluate the combined influence of cognitive complexity and program complexity on the comprehension and modification of the programs. The third set of hypotheses was designed to evaluate the moderating effect of experience on the relationship of cognitive complexity to program comprehension and modification. Cognitive integration was found to have a significant and positive nonlinear relationship only with the relatively complex program modification scores. The subjects who were ranked high in cognitive integration performed better than those ranked low in modifying the relatively complex program; but they performed the same in modifying the relatively simple program. Cognitive differentiation was found to have no significant relationship with either comprehension scores or modification scores. Experience of the subjects did not significantly moderate the relationship of cognitive complexity and program comprehension and modification.

The purpose of this research was to investigate the generation of machine code from high-level programming language. The following steps were undertaken: 1) Choose a high-level programming language as the source language and a computer as the target computer. 2) Examine all stages during the compiling of a high-level programming language and all data sets involved in the compilation. 3) Discover the mechanism for generating machine code and the mechanism to generate more efficient machine code from the language. 3) Construct an algorithm for generating machine code for the target computer. The results suggest that compiler is best implemented in a high-level programming language, and that SCANNER and PARSER should be independent of target representations, if possible.

This thesis describes a set of computer program control structures which permits the application of certain structured programming techniques to the IBM/360 assembly language (ALC). The control structures are implemented by programmerdefined instructions known as macros. A history of computer software is presented, providing a basis for the emergence of structured programming. A survey of the major concepts of structured programming with special attention to control structures and their significance to structured programming follows. The macros developed in this study include DO, ENDDO, LEAVE, CASE, and ENDCASE. They provide a looping control structure, a loop-escape construct, and a selective control structure. Examples of usage are given.

Thesis (MTech (Business Information Systems))--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2017. / The skill of programming necessitates knowing programming tools, problem solving and effective techniques of program design and implementation. Most students are incapable of fully understanding and utilising the feature set of Integrated Development Environments (IDEs). The feature set of certain IDEs comes with a lot of functionalities and students have to spend a lot of their time studying the features of the IDE without paying much attention to the syntax and semantics of the programming language. The main objective of this study was to examine the perceptions of students on interactive environments for teaching Object-Oriented concepts using the Java programming language in two integrated development environments. This was done by adopting the ISO 9126 model to select generic external system quality characteristics and sub-characteristics that might influence student evaluation of an IDE. The proposed model was applied on NetBeans and JCreator LE 5.0 as IDEs for teaching Java programming using OOP concepts. The study adopted a mixed method research approach using interviews and questionnaires. A single-case study was used for data collection and analysis. The approaches collected data from two groups of students using either NetBeans or JCreator and who were learning OOP concepts. The study further looked at the students’ class tests and exam results in an effort to have an objective overview of how students performed. These groups of students were at two different campuses of the selected University. Each group had already been exposed to the Java syntax. The result from this study was general guidelines to establish an interactive OOP development environment for teaching and learning of Java programming that enhances OOP comprehension. This research study involved human subjects. It was, therefore, a requirement to seek ethics approval. Additionally, the objects involved were students of a selected University and as such a consent letter was sought from the University.

The problem of this study was to describe and analyze the computer programming abilities and thought processes of five-year-old children using a conventional microcomputer and the Apple LOGO language. This dissertation reports on the behavior of five kindergarten children and the counts they made as they learned to program in LOGO on an Apple XI Plus microcomputer. The five participants were randomly selected from a group of ten five-year-olds who passed a screening test of numeral and capital letter recognition. The sample included three girls and two boys, all of whom were white. The students met individually with the researcher and the computer for about twenty minutes every day during a ten-week period.

Subjects were 38 computer programers employed in a national food-retailing corporation. A job analysis provided a basis for criteria development and served to guide the selection of predictors. Ratings of each programmer's job performance by his immediate supervisor, and scores on such tests as the Computer Programer Aptitude Battery (CPAB), clerical tests, and supervisory judgment test were obtained. Relationships between tests and criteria were examined to find the best test combination for predicting programming performance. Statistical treatment of data included a principal components analysis of the criteria and a multiple linear regression analysis. A weighted combination of the CPAB Reasoning, a test of clerical ability, and supervisory judgment test was found to be highly correlated with performance (R = .60).

PhD. (Department of Information and Communication Technology, Faculty of Applied and Computer Sciences), Vaal University of Technology. / Hackathons originated from the evolution and revolution of computers. They were primarily designed as a collaborative tool for solving computer-related tasks or theorising new possibilities based on specific infrastructures. With the prevalence of technology and the drive for digital evolution, the role of hackathons becomes increasingly essential, making its presence known in almost every domain with the potential to transform the business world and society at large. However, hackathons in the educational domain cannot be understood in the same way as their counterparts in a purely business or career-driven domain because of their special nature. Given that educational institutions in South Africa are still in the early stages of using hackathons, studying factors affecting hackathon adoption for teaching and learning computer programming is critical and timely. The research aimed to investigate and find factors that had a bearing on hackathon adoption for teaching and learning computer programming. To realise the aim, a systematic literature review was conducted. Then, a conceptual framework was developed that has its variables (attitude (ATT), effort expectancy (EE), facilitating conditions (FC), perceived usefulness (PU), relative advantage (RA), performance expectancy (PE), perceived ease of use (PEOU), subjective norm (SN), and behavioural intention (BI)) based on an extensive literature review. A questionnaire-based survey was conducted to test the model. The web-based questionnaire was administered to two hundred forty-nine (249) South African Information Technology programming students. Reliability of variables was measured, and all the variables had a co-efficient of 0.7 and greater. Factor analysis was applied and the PEOU failed to fulfil the requirement and so it was dropped. Descriptive and inferential statistics were applied to further analyse the data collected. The correlation result indicated that all the remaining variables in the conceptual framework are significant and have a positive relationship PU (𝑟=0.615), RA (𝑟=0.657), PE (𝑟= 0.597), SE (𝑟=0.660), ATT (𝑟=0.440), EE (𝜌<0.520), SN (𝑟= 0.441), and FC (𝑟=0.357) have a positive relationship with behavioural intention (𝜌<0.001) to adopt hackathon. The regression result indicated that the following variables (PU (𝛽=0.141,𝜌=0.036), RA (𝛽=0.142,𝜌=0.045), PE (𝛽=0.205,𝜌=0.002) and SE (𝛽=0.330,𝜌=0.000) have a positive influence on students’ hackathon adoption. The research study managed to validate the conceptual framework indicating variables that influence or have a relationship with BI. The developed framework forms the main contribution of this research study. The developed framework can be used to assist educators with the variables that have a strong bearing on the adoption of hackathon in education. The adoption of hackathon in education will contribute towards transforming the learning environment from a teacher-centred to a learner-centred one by facilitating a form of social learning where knowledge is created amongst students when interacting, thereby, building relationships, and supporting the learning that happens from cooperation, dependence and helping each other. In conclusion, the introduction of hackathons in education in computer programming can revolutionise the programming landscape in South Africa and around the world during this period of the fourth industrial revolution.

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This study explored how software development teams form and interact in a computer science college course setting and what an instructor can do to enhance effective teamwork. The experiences of computer science college courses’ teams are compared and contrasted to the theory of Bruce Tuckman’s stages of small group development model, which he characterized as forming, storming, norming, performing and adjourning. Participants repeatedly self-assessed their enthusiasm and skill levels over time on a questionnaire by agreeing or disagreeing to statements utilizing a five-point Likert scale. The data indicated that Tuckman’s model likely applies to software development teams in a computer science college course setting, although this could not be confirmed quantitatively. Indicators for which instructors or students can watch to identify a team that is struggling are provided along with some possible personality traits that may lead to a team’s success. / Background research and related work -- Tuckman's stages of small group development -- Definition of the research area -- Research and data analysis methods -- Data collection and analysis -- Conclusions and future directions. / Department of Computer Science