CSC 160
A First Course in Computer Programming
Spring, 2003
Getting Help
My office hours
(in Alumnae Hall 113A; if I'm not there, look around the corner in 112)
are
- Monday 12:00-2:00
- Tuesday/Thursday 9:30-12:00
- Other days and times by appointment.
We also have several
tutors capable of helping with this course:
- Aisha Ahmad
- by appointment
- Faith Barclay
- office hours MW 2:00-4:00 in Alumnae 112
- Arvind Budhram
- office hours TTh 11:00-1:00, and possibly F 1:00-3:00, in Alumnae 112
- Sasha Pogornets
- office hours probably Monday 4:00-6:00 and Wednesday 12:00-2:00,
also in Alumnae 112
Textbook
The main textbook for this class is How to Design Programs, by
Felleisen, Fisler, Flatt, and Krishnamurthi, published by MIT Press.
The text of the book is available on-line,
but I've also ordered the printed version through the bookstore;
you are encouraged, but not required to buy the printed
version.
This textbook uses the Scheme programming language. Why Scheme?
Recipes and Syntax Rules
You'll get through this course a lot more easily if you follow
the design recipes! Here are the recipes and
syntax rules we've seen so far, and you can also read about the
spelling, grammar, vocabulary, and idioms of
Scheme.
Software support
We use the software package
DrScheme, which is available for
free download for Windows, Mac, and Unix.
I've set up some
forms for entering and viewing PSP data.
You may use these forms to record defect and time information.
To use the forms successfully, make sure your browser accepts JavaScript and
cookies. (For those with a moral opposition to cookies, I assure you
that they're all "temporary" -- they disappear as soon as you quit the
browser.)
(For more information about PSP, see the PSP page at
Carnegie-Mellon or read
Watts
Humphrey's Introduction to the Personal Software Process.)
- Read (and use!) the
Design Recipe(s).
- See my folder of programming
examples on composing functions, working with booleans, writing with
conditionals, defining and using structs, mixed-type data,
etc.
- Skim my Adages on Software Engineering and
Object-Oriented Programming; in particular, read the few
paragraphs about "the joys (and woes) of the craft".
- On Pair Programming: read
All
I Really Need to Know about Pair Programming I Learned in
Kindergarten
- My page on the minimal Scheme
language treats Scheme as a foreign language, with its own spelling,
punctuation, grammar, vocabulary, and idioms.
-
You might also be interested in Jack Crouch's CS1 Web site. Jack Crouch teaches a course on
beginning programming, using Scheme, DrScheme, and How to Design
Programs; the difference is that he's teaching high school freshmen
rather than college freshmen.
Who should take this course?
This course is intended primarily for people who have not previously
studied computer programming, both CS majors and non-majors. For
non-majors, this course counts towards your math/science distribution
requirement. Students who have passed at least a semester (half a year)
of computer programming with a "B" or better, or who have a strong math
background, may skip this course and go straight to CSC 171, or they may
take this course anyway; some of the concepts will be familiar, but
they'll probably still learn a lot.
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to this page since June 4, 2001.
Last modified:
Stephen Bloch / sbloch@adelphi.edu