Instructors: Samuel Marateck
See course homepage for office hours and other info.
Course Summary
This is a first course in computer science, using Java, an
object oriented language.
Some basic knowledge in either C or Pascal is required. You should be
familiar with the following concepts, in either C or Pascal:
Students without programming experience should take the more introductory course V22.0002
Text
Course Home Page
The course home page URL is
http://www.cs.nyu.edu/courses/fall07/V22.0101-002/homepage.html
Computer Software and Lab
The software used by the course is JDK and JCreator which you must
download from the web, as indicated on the course homepage. The
software is also provided at the PC Lab run by the ITS (Information
Technology Service) at 14 Washington Place (basement).
E-mail Accounts
All students are required to have e-mail addresses,
and e-mail will be used extensively for communication with
the course tutors, and for submitting the homework assignments.
Your e-mail headers and mailing list subscription information
must clearly display your name. Do not use an alias instead.
Submitting your homework files by e-mail from the lab or from home is easy,
and is explained on the course homepage.
On the WEB, at a URL indicated on the course homepage, you should
subscribe to the appropriate course mailing list.
E-tutors and Computer Assignments
Each student will be assigned to an e-tutor. The e-tutors are
upper-level undergraduate students with exceptional academic records.
They are available by e-mail to help you with questions about the
computer assignments, to evaluate your submissions, and to steer you
in the right direction when help is needed.
Five programming assignments will be given. Solutions must be
submitted by e-mail, on or before the due date. Your e-tutor will
send you an e-mail giving a numerical grade for your program. If the
grade is below 4.0, the e-tutor will explain why the program is not
satisfactory. In this case, you then have one week to send a
corrected program, to the e-tutor, to try to raise your grade for the
assignment. The role of the e-tutor is just as much to
help you learn to successfully write programs as to evaluate your
final submissions.
The e-tutor will run the final program on various inputs, so it is
important that the program work correctly for any choice of input.
Remember that although the e-tutor is there to help you, he or she is also helping many other students, so limit your e-mail communication to a reasonable amount. If you are have much difficulty with the programs, you should ask your instructor for assistance.
Cooperation, Acknowledgments and Cheating
You are expected to do your own work. It is fine, in fact often
very helpful, to work cooperatively with other students,
but the work you submit should be your own.
If you get an idea from another student, or from a tutor, that you use
in your work, this is OK, but you must acknowledge that person
in the program comments. If you are not sure whether something is cheating
or not, ask your e-tutor or your instructor! Cheating, that is
submitting work which is not your own, with or without the author's permission,
generally leads to a course grade of F.
Students who spend little time on the homework invariably do poorly on exams and end up with a poor final grade.
Assistance at the Lab
If you are having trouble while working in the lab,
ask the lab consultants for help first.
They cannot write or debug your program for you,
but they can often give you helpful advice.
There will also be a special TA for the course available at
the lab during certain hours listed on the course homepage.
Assistance from your Instructor
If you are unable to get the help you need at the lab or from your e-tutor,
do not hesitate to contact your instructor, by telephone, by e-mail,
or in person. Please do this early in the semester, before it
is too late to get the help you need. Feel free also to contact your
instructor with any questions you have about the course.
Exams
There will be one midterm test the week of OCT 15 and one final exam on DEC 17
at 10:00 am. Final grades will be based approximately 40% on the final exam,
30% on the midterm and 30% on the homework.
Syllabus and Goals
Chapters 1--10, chapter 19 and sections 16.1,
16.2, and 16.4 of the text will be covered, with some exceptions to be
announced later.