Texts

I'm using two different textbooks for this course. For levels 1, 2, 3, and part of 4, we'll use How to Design Programs, by Felleisen, Findler, Flatt, and Krishnamurthi (who also wrote the programming platform we'll use, DrScheme). This book is due to be printed ``any day now'' by MIT Press, but it's already available on the Web at
http://www.cs.rice.edu/CS/PLT/Teaching/Lectures/Released/Book/. Some of the later chapters are still being written, but they should be complete by the time we get to them.

For more level-4 knowledge, we'll use Introduction to the Personal Software Process, by Watts Humphrey (Addison-Wesley 1997, ISBN 0-201-54809-7). This book discusses how to keep track of problems you encounter in programming, so as to prevent them in the future, and how to manage your time so as to finish programming assignments before they're due. (The easiest way to fail my class is to fail to turn in homework assignments!)

You'll need to read an average of about 50 pages a week. You are responsible for everything in the reading assignments, whether or not I discuss it in a lecture. You are also responsible for checking my class Web page and the WebBoard discussion group at least once a week or so; I often post assignments, corrections to assignments, solutions to assignments, etc. there.