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CS 135 Survival Guide Why a survival guide? CS 135 is designed to be well withi

CS 135 Survival Guide Why a survival guide? CS 135 is designed to be well within the reach of all university students. There is no material in CS 135 that is beyond your abilities, and there is no reason that you should not succeed in it. However, the nature of computer science can make any introductory course a challenge to those who do not develop the right work habits. This survival guide is a collection of guidelines, tips, suggestions, and background information to help you make the best of your opportunities. It is based on the experience of ﬁrst-year students facing their ﬁrst university course in computer science. Course philosophy We designed CS 135 for students in diverse programs, keeping in mind the large range of possible ways in which computer science might be integrated into future studies. By choosing to focus on fundamental concepts and study them in depth, we are giving students transferable skills on which to build (rather then providing a shallow overview of the breadth of the ﬁeld of computer science). The material in CS 135 lends itself very nicely to being built up in successive layers, where a new layer is added only when the previous one is completely explained and understood. One of our goals is to progress through the material in small steps rather than huge leaps. When you use a Web browser, e-mailer, or other modern computer application, there’s a lot going on behind the scenes. One of our goals is to have as little “magic” as possible. You might hear us saying “Know your tools.” That means understanding not only what the tools do, but how they do it. In many cases, we will show how to implement built-in features of Scheme, rather than just describe them. Doing the assignments is the key to doing well in the course. The process of arriving at the answer is more important than the answer itself. Each component of the course has a role to play: lectures, the textbook and assignments teach you the material and give you a chance to prac- tice; assignments and midterms provide diagnos- tics, giving you feedback on whether or not you are on the right track; and assignments, midterms, and the ﬁnal are used for assessment (computing your mark in the course). Lectures illustrate concepts and techniques; assignments give you practice in those concepts and techniques, strengthening your existing skills and teaching you new ones. Most of the learning in CS 135 takes place through your working through problems on your own. In many cases the ﬁnal answer isn’t particularly relevant; it’s going through the process of arriving at the ﬁnal answer that’s important. Doing the assignments is the key to doing well in the course. Skipping assignments would be like trying to learn to play a musical instrument without practicing, attempting to master 1 a language without speaking it, or claiming to be an outstanding artist or athlete based solely on theoretical understanding of the underlying principles of the ﬁeld. In previous offerings of ﬁrst-year courses, we have discovered that the number of assignment questions submitted was a better predictor of ﬁnal grades than were high school marks. Some students make the mistake of thinking that these components aren’t important because they only account for 20% of the ﬁnal grade, or that they can skip one assignment because it’s worth so little. But an assignment question worth less than 1% of the ﬁnal grade could provide important insight into a concept tested by a ﬁnal exam question weighted more heavily. You must earn an overall passing grade in the assignments in order to pass the course. If assignments are so important, why aren’t they weighted as a greater percentage of the ﬁnal grade? Your ﬁnal grade is sup- posed to be an indication of how well you have mastered course material. That’s as- sessment, which occurs after learning. Lec- tures are part of the learning process, so you don’t receive marks for attendance. If we took the assignments out of the ﬁnal grade computation, you’d be tempted not to do them, and put yourself in serious danger of failing the ﬁnal exam. So we make them worth a little bit to encourage you to do what you should be doing for your own good anyway. In fact, you must earn an overall passing grade in the assignments in order to pass the course. Lectures We’ve tried to create a lightweight implementation of the basic course outline. Instead of having a ﬁxed set of slides for each lecture, we’ve grouped slides into thematic units we call lecture modules, with only a rough idea of how long we will take to cover each one. That way, if you ask a lot of questions, we don’t have to rush over subsequent material to catch up with a ticking clock. The instructors work from the same set of lecture notes, though each will say different things, and possibly write different examples on the board (or overhead projector, or data projector). If you have to miss your lecture, it is better to attend another lecture than not attend any that day. However you should be aware that as the sections may drift a little out of sync, you may still end up missing some material. In addition, you should be sure that you are not taking a seat from someone who is legitimately enrolled in that section. Deadlines are ﬁrm. For possibly the ﬁrst time in your life, no one is forcing you to go to lectures. You are free to not attend. This honour system is built on the assump- tion that this freedom will be exercised responsibly. Other aspects of this assumption include the assumption that students will complete the required work on time, as deadlines are ﬁrm and no “bonus assignments” are handed out to bolster marks. You may be tempted to skip lecture because the text of all lecture slides is available on the web; surely you can do just as well reading them? If we thought that, we wouldn’t be lecturing. The slides are like basic musical chords over which we improvise a melody; the chords alone do not make up the whole song. Not everything is written down on the slides. It’s not that we’ve 2 deliberately left things out; it’s just that we don’t design the slides to be the sole source of learning, but rather as an aid in lecturing. The handouts contain the text of the slides so that you don’t need to scribble madly while we display them. That frees up your time so that you can take proper notes on what we say in class. We’ve seen students write down only what we write on the board, or not write anything down at all, ﬁguring that the slides do all their work for them. That’s a mistake; you can’t possibly remember all of what is said in all of the lectures you will attend during a term. Taking notes helps ﬁx information in your long-term memory, keeps you active, and allows you to preserve insights that you gain during the course of a lecture. You can’t remember all the important stuff in a lecture; take notes. Going to lectures reserves three hours of dedi- cated time each week during which you are think- ing about course material, with the aid of someone who understands it thoroughly. It’s a rare student who is disciplined enough to skip lectures and ade- quately substitute for that experience. Of course, not every minute of lectures is “quality time”, but you won’t know what you’re missing if you don’t attend. Take something discreet to do (like your math homework or a good novel) during the stretches where there’s an extra example of something you already understand, and make sure you keep one eye and ear on what’s going on. You’re shar- ing space, so don’t do anything that might annoy or distract your classmates: don’t let your cell phone ring, don’t rustle food wrappers loudly, and don’t play video games on your laptop. The textbook CS 135 wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for our textbook, “How to Design Programs”. CS is not a ﬁeld blessed with an abundance of good textbooks, due to its very short history and the ever-changing nature of the curriculum. This is one of the better textbooks. The lectures are designed on the assumption that you’ll do the assigned readings—before lecture if possible, but certainly before you attempt to do the corresponding assignment. This is not a textbook to be used for reference, to be looked at only when you run into trouble on an assignment. That will only increase the amount of time you’ll need to get your work done. (We’ll say more about doing assignments below.) On occasion, we will use the same examples in lectures as in the textbook, illustrating different aspects. More often, we will use different examples, and at times, we will “parallel” the book by covering uploads/Litterature/ survival-guide 2 .pdf