General Information

Throughout most of high school education and especially on standardized testing, many ’educators’ focus on providing students with tools to solve specific, identifiable problems. There are a variety of reasons for this, including political and financial pressures placed on academic institutions, but one of the most important is that it is easy. It is easy to ask students to solve the same type of problem one hundred times over, so there is a massive chance of them getting it right on a test.

What is not easy, and what this course is designed to do, is to teach students not only the tools of programming and program design, but when and why to use those tools.

It also not easy to learn these concepts, but if you are also willing to work hard, then you will learn them. It is the desicion making—the when and why—of designing programs that demands understanding, and it is why success in this course can only come with understanding of the material. This will also be true of other courses you take in college; if you can get a high grade without understanding the concepts in question, you are either cheating yourself or you are allowing the instructor to cheat you. Buyer beware.

In college, if you do not already know how, you must learn how to learn. The quality of your life depends on it. Your life. Nothing more, nothing less.

Why do we have grades in this class, then? Well, for two reasons: one being we are a part of a university and must administer them. The second one being that grades are a form of feedback, and detailed feedback is how we can help you improve. It is our end of the bargain. Your end is to demonstrate that you put in the effort to understand the methods we teach such that you have internalized them. After all, you don’t want to waste your time, and we don’t want to waste ours either.

So, if you wish to earn a grade in this course, you must submit the Course Contractduring the first lab session (2501). We will show you how to submit it in lab, so you must attend. Your submission acknowledges that you have read these notes and understood the contract between you and the course staff. We promise: As long as you will live up to its spirit, we will stand by you during this semester.

Class

Labs

The course comes with several lab sections. The labs start the first full week of class, on September 10.

Lab coordinator: Rebecca MacKenzie (r.mackenzie at northeastern.edu)

Lab		Instructor		Time		Days		Location
3		Alex Grundwerg		8:00-9:40am		T		WVH 212
4		Annie Dinh		8:00-9:40am		T		WVH 210
5		Amogh Dayal		9:50-11:30am		T		WVH 212
6		John Compitello		9:50-11:30am		T		WVH 210
7		Luciana Corteggiano		11:45am-1:25pm		T		WVH 212
8		Carter Codell		11:45am-1:25pm		T		WVH 210
9		Jason Crouse		1:35-3:15pm		T		WVH 212
10		Daniel Goldstein		1:35-3:15pm		T		WVH 210
11		Ameen Radwan		3:25-5:05pm		T		WVH 212
12		Suzanne Becker		3:25-5:05pm		T		WVH 210
13		Jack Mastrangelo		5:15-6:55pm		T		WVH 212
14		Ryan Bradford		5:15-6:55pm		T		WVH 210
15		Raquel Levy		7:05-8:45pm		T		WVH 212

You signed up for a lab section during registration. You must attend the lab section you are registered for.

The purpose of labs is to give you some hands-on experience with the actual tools, and to explain some of the principles from lecture with hands-on examples.

Computing Environment

We will use DrRacket (v7.0), a programming environment for a family of programming languages. For Fundamentals I, we will stick to the HtDP teaching languages plus a small number of teachpacks. DrRacket is installed on the CCS computers.We urge you to download DrRacket to your own computer so that you can work on CS 2500 wherever, whenever you like. It is also freely available on the web in case you wish install it on your own computer.

DrRacket runs on most popular platforms (Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and other *nixes). Programs written in the teaching languages have mostly the same behavior on all platforms. You therefore do not need to worry what kind of machine you use when you run your programs.

All that being said, should you have issues installing DrRacket on your machine, you may use the college’s virtual desktop infrastructure. We do, however, strongly recommend installing and using DrRacket on your own computer.

CCIS Account

In order to submit homeworks and lab quizzes in this class, you will need to have a CCIS account. You are eligible for such an account if you are a CCIS major, or if you are in a CCIS class (such as this one). You can apply for a CCIS account at https://my.ccs.neu.edu/, and you should during the first week of class, so that you have the account activated by the first lab.

Problem Sets

The purpose of the problem sets is to prepare you for the exam. Usually there will be two assignments due per week: one on Mondays and one on Thursdays at 9:00pm.

This is the basic schedule but may vary from week to week, especially in the beginning of the semester.

Late Policy

Falling behind on homework is never a good idea: the course presents new material every day, making catching up harder and harder. Additionally, in weeks that you are completing code reviews, your homework must be submitted on time in order for someone else to review it on time.

However, we know that your time is not always easily scheduled, and some weeks, “stuff happens.” We will therefore allow you to turn in your work up to 20 hours after the deadline at a 5% per hour penalty. The handin server will prevent any further submission even 20-hours-and-one-second late, so it’s not worth trying to sneak in a submission in those last few seconds.

Pair Programming

You must work on your graded problem sets in assigned pairs (Note: pair, not triple or with my friends). Your partner will be a classmate in the same lab as you; your lab TA will assign you the first partner. We will switch partners twice (see syllabus).

Pair programming means that you and your partner work on the problem sets jointly. You read them together and you work on the solutions together. One of the lab’s purposes is to teach you how to work in pairs effectively; indeed, pairs are provably more effective than individuals in programming. The rough idea is this: One of you plays pilot, the other co-pilot. The pilot works on the keyboard and explains aloud what is going on; it is the co-pilot’s responsibility to question things that do not make sense. After a problem is solved to the satisfaction of both, you must switch roles.

Exams

The exams will test material similar to that assigned in weekly problem sets. If you can solve every homework problem on your own, the exams will be easy. If not, you will have a difficult time.

You may bring one piece of paper to the exam, double sided, with anything written (or typed) on it that you want. We are limiting you in this way because (a) writing this one sheet of paper is an excellent way to study and (b) we have found that in the past, the more papers that students bring to the exam, the worse they do. We want you to focus on the exam, not on shuffling through everything you’ve ever written.

You may also bring any (or all) of the informational cards we will be handing out throughout the semester. This is in addition to your one sheet of paper.

If you have lost or damaged the cards we handed out in class you may use this sheet as one side of your cheat sheet for the exam. You may NOT bring this sheet in addition to your one piece of paper. It must be used as one side of your one piece of paper. We will NOT be handing out cards at the exam.

You may have noticed the discrepancy between "one-hour" and the actual times. The exam is a one-hour exam. A student who has worked through the readings and graded problems can solve the problems on the exam in less than an hour. To make sure that nobody feels rushed, however, we allocate three hours immediately for students with special needs as well as students who feel they need time on the exam to double and triple check their work.

Grades

Accelerated

If, during the the first 3 weeks of this course, you feel that you would benefit from learning at a more accelerated pace, you may be able to transfer into the accelerated section. To request a switch, you should talk to Professor Ahmed who teaches the accelerated section; she will need to meet with you before she can initiate a switch. Her email address is amal at ccs.neu.edu

Note that you will need to move to lecture section 1 (CRN 10501 1:35-2:30pm, Mon/Wed/Thu). You will also have to choose from either lab 1 (CRN 10321, 9:50-11:30am Fri) or lab 2 (CRN 10690 11:45am-1:25pm Fri). Both the lecture and the lab must fit in your schedule and have space available in the room.

Until September 13th this change can be made effective immediately after Professor Ahmed approves.

After September 13th but before September 21st this change will be made effective September 24th. Thus, you should continue to attend your regular lecture and lab, and turn in all regular assignments, until the week of September 24th.

After September 21st you can no longer change sections.