CSCI A201/A597 Lecture Notes 1 Spring 2000

We started by introducing ourselves, our coordinates are listed on the main page of the course. Requirements for this class were listed:

• an IUB network ID
• an IUB NT domain account
• a textbook
• a box of floppies

An e-mail distribution list will also be set up shortly. It will be used by the instructors to dispatch information on a weekly basis (on the average).

Cheating was discussed and we said you should not do it. If it seems like you cheated and you submitted work that is not yours we'll take one of two approaches as follows:

• either turn you in for cheating and you have to endure the consequences (see code of ethics, and departmental policy on cheating, to be linked here soon)
• or we'll have a playoff for the work you submitted: you get an individual (proctored) test of the same difficulty and your grade on this test becomes the grade for the work that was deemed suspect and started the controversy in the first place

Homework and in-lab assignments will be turned in on floppies, at the end of the lab when they're due. Homework assignments differ from in-labs in that the homework assignments are

• either more difficult, or
• more handholding will be provided for the in-labs

• sequence of instructions
• coded in a certain language

I was able to understand only English (no Russian or Japanese).

My set of actions were only:

• move forward one step
• turn left

Moreover we were able to define "turn right" as a sequence of three left turns, thus building a higher abstraction. (Not really a right turn, but the sequence of turning left three times does lead to the same final state as a turn right).

To program computers in this class we'll use the following language: Java.

Java as a language describes the primitive actions that we can rely on to build bigger, more complex programs.

The process of developing a computer program in Java involves the following steps:

1. think about the problem and find a solution
2. convince yourselves (prove) that the solution is correct
3. code the solution in Java and write the Java code in a file
4. compile the Java code in bytecode (machine level code)
5. run the bytecode (using the Java interpreter)

The file created (with notepad) was Hello.java:

public class Hello {
  public static void main(String[] args) {
    System.out.println("Hello, and welcome to A201!"); 
  } 
}

This in turn creates Hello.class.

We then run java Hello to produce the desired output.

The process is somewhat different if the compiler reports errors.

We said chapter 0 is a good reading assignment at this point, and a syllabus will be posted in a few days, detailing the topics to be covered, and tested, and a timeline for that.