CSC 171
Introduction to Computer Programming

Fall, 1998

Introduction to the course

The syllabus

Schedule

Homework Assignments

Announcements

• All sections, 9/10/98: I've modified the files Rings.html and Rings.java, and added a Rings.mcp, in the buggles folder. Please download these corrected versions, so you can use them as a basis for homework 2.
• All sections, 9/21/98: To make it a little easier for you to experiment with the examples in the Felleisen & Friedman book, I've typed in a bunch of the examples as CodeWarrior projects. See my Felleisen & Friedman Examples Folder.
• All sections, 9/29/98: As a number of people had trouble today with renaming their programs, I've written detailed instructions on this as part of Homework 3.
• Morning sections, 10/27/98; evening section, 11/17/98: I've put my FileWriter.java class online, showing a sequence of seven different versions that I went through in the course of writing it, and what was wrong with each of them. An instructive example. See my folder examples/io/FileWriter.
• All sections, 10/29/98: Lab assistant Pete Alois will have regular hours in one or the other of our labs:
  • Mondays 12:30 - 3:00 PM
  • Tuesdays 4:30 - 6:00 PM (or a little later)
  His primary job is to help with quill-pen stuff -- how to use CodeWarrior, how to put your files in the right folder, how to name your files, how to email files to me for grading, etc. -- but he can help you track down Java error messages too.
• All sections, 11/6/98: I've downloaded and installed all the sample programs from the Arnow & Weiss textbook; they're in the downloads folder under AW_code. For example, the InteractiveIO.java is there for downloading, in two versions, in case you don't feel like typing it in yourself.
• All sections, 11/12/98: In response to various students' pleas to back up and refresh their memory on "the basics", we spent this week's class periods on a hands-on programming exercise, from creating a new project to defining a class with a variety of useful methods and instance variables. If you weren't in class these two days, please work through the exercise!

Reading Assignments

• Arnow & Weiss Chaps. 1-5
• Felleisen & Friedman Chaps. 1-2
• Skim my Adages on Software Engineering and Object-Oriented Programming; in particular, read the few paragraphs about "the joys (and woes) of the craft".
• Read the Ten-Minute Guide to HTML.
• Read, copy, and experiment with my FunWithStrings application.
• Read, copy, and experiment with my Felleisen & Friedman examples (I suggest FTP-ing the entire folder class_dir/examples/ff. I haven't typed in everything from the first two chapters, but I've done enough that you should be able to take it from here.)
• For an extended saga of class-definition to automate the nasty I/O stuff in chapter 3, see my FileWriter class.
• Read How do I declare a variable?, a discussion of different kinds of variables in Java.
• Read (and use!) the Design Recipe for Methods.

Downloads

• The Downloads Directory (or "Downloads Folder", if you prefer). This is a good place to practice moving around in a hierarchical directory structure.
• Boilerplate web page, to be modified and personalized as you wish.
• The Buggles Folder, which contains a bunch of stuff you need for homework 2.

For further information

Java and OOP

• Object Oriented Programming FAQ
• Instant Java, another Java book that provides a large collection of sample applets on the Web
• Wired on Java an on-line Java instruction site with tutorials
• Documentation files for the Java API, version 1.0.2 (all the common built-in classes, like System, Math, Polygon, Applet, etc.)
• Documentation files for the Java API, version 1.1.6 (which makes text I/O and event-handling easier, but not all common browsers understand it yet, so if you write applets depending on it, some people won't be able to run them.)
• CSC 390, the Java course I taught in the summer of 1997.
• Java example programs

HTML and Web-site authoring (Warning: you can easily spend much too much time on this, considering it'll all be obsolete in a year or two!)

• W3C's HTML Page, where you'll find definitive information about the latest version of HTML.
• HTML Goodies, a collection of lot of tutorials and examples of stuff you can do with HTML.
• Builder.com, a site containing lots of tips, tricks, and suggestions for writing better pages and sites.

Using the Adelphi computer systems

The Adelphi Help Desk page

Computing in general

• The Free Online Dictionary of Computing.
• The Association for Computing Machinery, the premiere professional organization for computer scientists. The site includes career services, the student programming contest, a student magazine, information on student membership, and lots more.