Overview

• Preliminaries.
  • Admin.
• The subject matter of the course.
• Course evaluation.

Preliminaries

Admin

• Forms!
  
  • Permission to share work
  • EOCEs
  • Course Mentor Assessment
• Yes, I expect you to be in class on Friday. I will provide bacon, spinach, and some sweets (maybe donettes). I will also return exams and give grades.
• Upcoming extra credit opportunities:
  • CS Extras Thursday at 4:30: Mediascripting.
  • CS Table Friday: The Reactive Manifesto.

The subject matter of the course

• Tangential matters
  • Alex Mitchell (or at least his grade)
  • Should _ major in CS?
• Useful, but not central
  • Working with a different OS (there will be more)
• Computer programming, using functions
  • Representing algorithms
• Problem solving
  • In very restricted domains
  • While thinking about types
• Store data in structures and maniplate structures
• The Scheme programming language

Areas

• General program components
• Scheme
• Functional problem solving
• Computer science
• Broader skills
• World view

General Program Components

• Named values
• Procedures
• Conditionals
• Looping
• Sequencing of operations
• Comments - Documentation is important
• ...

Scheme

• ()

Functional Problem Solving

• Immutable data
• Pure functions
• Anonymous functions
• Functions as inputs to other functions (e.g., map)
• Functions as results of other functions (e.g., l-s)
• ...

Computer Science - Algorithms and Data Structures

• For algorithms to be successful, the goals need to be clearly articulated
• Recursion
  • For algorithms
  • For data design (lists, numbers, trees)
• The parts of an algorithm
• Famous algorithms: Binary search, Sorting algorithms
• Famous data types: lists, trees, vectors
• "There's more than one way to grin a cat"
  • Designing a successful algorithm requires some creativity
  • And there is sometimes one "best" way to solve a problem
• Three broad ways of thinking about algorithm design
  • Imperative - Changing state
  • By sending messages to objects - Turtles and objects
  • In a pure functional style
• At least two ways to approach data
  • List - Extendible, but expensive
  • Vector - Mutable, fast, but fixed-size
  • ...
• It's important to think about algoritihms already designed
  • Correctness
  • Efficiency
• ...

Broader Skills

• Working in a team
• Thinking on your feet
• General approaches to problem solving
• When you don't know what to do
  • Ask for help!
  • Don't bash your head against the wall
  • Google it (which usually fails in Scheme)
• Articulate things formally
• Patience and anger management
• Don't try to do everything all at once
• ...

World View

• Have fun! **
• Computers are sentient and malicious!
• There's more to life than CS.
• Care about each other, which includes learning their names.

And Beyond

• Um - The universal message of "give me ammoment to think"
• We can design algorithms that do creative things
• And we can apply algorithms creatively
• Some people care a lot about minute formatting details
  • spaceshelpaloti nr eadabi lity
• Some people care a lot about academic honesty
• Sam may not be sentient, but he's certainly malicious

Course evaluation