Marking Scheme for TMA1

Suggested Answer

1. In a high-level programming language, instructions are written in a form that is

human-readable, because it is something like ordinary human language. In
machine language, instructions are coded as binary numbers. A computer cannot
understand high-level programming languages directly – they must be translated
into machine language before they can be executed. The computer can directly
execute a program that is written in its machine language.

2. The CPU, or Central Processing Unit, is the active part(or brain) of the computer.
Its function is to execute programs that are coded in machine language and stored
in the main memory (RAM) of the computer. It does this by repeating the fetch-
and-execute cycle over and over; that is, it repeatedly fetches a machine language
instruction from memory and executes it.

3. The “javac” command translates the Java source code into Java “bytecode”
instructions, which are stored in the class file. Java bytecode is the machine
language fro the “Java Virtual Machine,” a computer that doesn’t actually exist.
The program can be executed by running the class file under the “java” command,
which is an interpreter for Java bytecode.

4. java is a multiplatform language. That is, programs written in Java can be run on
many different types of computer. This is essential for programs that are going to
be downloaded over the Internet, since many types of computer are connected to
the Net. It allows Java applets to be used on Web pages, and Java gets a lot of its
popularity from its association with the Web.

Java also has many features that make it a good choice for modern computing. It
is object-oriented. It support multithreading, making it easy to write programs that
do several things at once. It uses garbage collection for memory management,
which frees the programmer from worrying about one of the most common
 sources of errors in programs. It has built-in support for a graphical user interface
and event-driven programming.

5. The word “public” means that the main routine is visible or accessible from
outside the class in which it is defined. It is necessary since main will be called
from outside the class (by the system) when the program is executed.

6. a) a class is a blueprint/prototype/general definition from where we can create

objects. Classes can specify the attributes and actions that specific members of the
class can have. A class example with attribute, “Student” would be a class
defining the general characteristics of all students, e.g., a name and a date of birth.

b) an object is specific instance of a class that has specific values fro the
attributes defined in the prototype class definition. For example, in the Student
class, specific student would be Mark with a specific name(i.e., Mark) and date of
birth(e.g., 30/05/79)

7. for many years, programming languages used the 7-bit ASCII character set, and
more recently, the 8-bit Extended ASCII character set.

However, Java does not use the ASCII character set. Java characters are expressed
as 16-bit Unicode characters.