When

Last 10 minutes of class on Wednesday, September 9, 2026.

Everyone takes the exam at the same time.

Scope

Language and computation.

Ground Rules

You will take the exam on paper. There is 10 minute time limit, or 15 minutes for those with time-and-a-half accommodations.

You may bring one sheet of paper with notes written on both sides.

Preparation Checklist

Do each of the following to maximize your preparation:

• (Optional) Go through Nicky Case’s How to Remember Everything Forever-ish.
• (Optional) Read Atul Gawande’s The Checklist.
• Review the recordings for class periods you missed, and for portions of the class sessions that you attended but feel you need to review.
• Skim or read through the provided resources on Computing, Computer Science, and Software Engineering.
• (Optional)Watch the embedded videos in the resources above.
• Work through the course notes on Language and Computation.
• Watch the embedded videos in the course notes above.
• Follow some of the links within the course notes to outside articles and videos. This gives you access to new material as well as additional takes on the course content.
• Practice with the recall questions on the notes above.
• (Optional)Make a pass over Gabe Robins’ A Brief History of Computing.

Were you able to check off every box?

Things to Know

The learning objectives for the course up to this point in time include you having developed a familiarity with, and an ability to discuss:

• A little history of computer science
• The importance and usefulness of foundational theories, especially in computer science, but also in any discipline
• The scope and big ideas of each of the four theories of computer science: languages, automata, computability, and complexity

Outline of Course Content

The fact that active recall is better for acquiring long-term knowledge does not mean that outlines and concept maps are not useful. Learners should use multiple techniques—think “both and” rather than “either or.”

Language and Computation
    Greetings in several human languages
    What machines can and cannot do
    Definitions of foundational terms
        Information
        Computation
        Automation
    Why language is important in computer science
    Information
        Encoded with symbols
        Transmitted through a channel
        Decoded by a receiver
        Unicode
        Importance of Shannon's paper
    Language
        The three views
            Formal, mathematical, precise
            Human, biological, historical, social, cultural, messy
            LLMs, statistical, probabilistic, pattern-based
    Computation
        Pop Culture
        History
            Ancient times: tally marks
            Numerals
            Early recipes
            Early calculating machines
            Three Schools
                Logicism
                Formalism
                Intuitionism
            Hilbert's program
            Gödel's incompleteness theorems
            Formalization of computation
                Church's lambda calculus
                Turing's machine model
                Gödel's recursive functions
            Impact of Turing's paper
                Formalization of effictive computation with a machine model
                Evidence that the machine model matches intuitive notions of computation
                Universality
                Limits of what is computable
            Electronic computing machines
            What PLs try to do
            Language implementation ideas
            Human-centric computing
            Modern trends
            Themes
            Philosophical connections

About the Problems

This is a timed mini-quiz which tests for immediate understanding of topics and not your ability to work out problems over an extended duration of time. There will be 5–10 questions. Some may be multiple choice, multi-select, matching, and very short answer.

All content on the assigned readings is fair game for questions, so do not neglect the readings, and by all means do the recall questions!