This book presents the contents of an introduction course to Computer Science for engineering disciplines where the engineer makes
use of the computer not only as an "office tool" but also as an integral
part of his designs. This is the case of the curricula in Industrial
Automation, Telecommunication, or Aeronautics, where some engineering
designs really consist of embedded systems built around a
microcontroller. In all these curricula, the engineer needs a deeper
insight on the computer basics that goes beyond the classical
introduction to programming, which is considered to be complementary to
this book. This book introduces the basics of computer structure and
organization. The topics covered by the book are Information Coding,
Digital Systems, Computer Organization, Machine Language, and the
Computer Input/Output. The approach followed to introduce all these
topics is the use of Systems Theory and abstraction as a way to deal
with complexity: a strong emphasis is put throughout the book in
identifying boxes with a well-defined functionality and a set of inputs
and outputs. Complex objects, as computers, can be usually decomposed
into a set of simpler components interconnected through their inputs and
outputs. These components define a lower level of abstraction that
allows showing up some implementation details that were not relevant at
higher levels of abstraction.
