CSC 207 2023S, Class 01: Getting started

Overview

• Preliminaries
  • Notes and news
  • Upcoming work
  • Extra credit
  • Questions
• Course goals
• Course structure
• Academic honesty & LLMs
• ADTs and data structures
• A quick intro to object-oriented design
• Designing a stack ADT (an exercise)

Preliminaries

News / Etc.

• Welcome to CSC207!
• I’m Sam (or SamR)
• Our class mentors are Pom Dao and Micah Cantor.
• Since it’s the first day of class, I will take attendance. (It will take me a few weeks to learn all of your names.)
  • “Hi, my name is FORENAME SURNAME.”
  • “You can call me PRIMARY_NAME.”
  • Optional: “My pronouns are ….”
  • “If you must address me by surname, you can call me Mr./Ms./Mx./[nothing] SURNAME.”
  • “This semester, I’m excited about TOPIC”

Excited about

• Seeing people.
• Making money playing card games.
• Holiday season.
• Visit of cool author(s) to campus. (Sept. 6)
• The heat wave. Or maybe the end thereof. [x2]
• Pickleball.
• Learning Piano.
• Ceramics.
• Snow.
• Meet new people and learn new things.
• Making snarky suckup comments.
• Collapsing from heatstroke on the soccer field (or ten-minute periods)
• Grading for CS.
• Excelling.
• Bad jokes.
• A/C [x2]
• Learning Java [x2]
• Learning OOP.
• Learn more about CS
• UM
• Fall
• Cooking (and avoiding the dining hall)
• Living in a single [x2]
• Living in a triple
• LIving in a bigger dorm room
• Explore Iowa
• Figuring out why MC Cantor considers this the core of the major.

Upcoming work

• Read the syllabus and answer questions on it [email]
• Tell me about yourself
• Do some readings
• All will be mailed to you.

Tokens (Academic/Artistic)

• Scholar’s Convocation with President Harris, 11:00 a.m., 31 August 2023, JRC 101.
• Cool book talk on Sep. 6.

Tokens (Peer)

None yet.

Extra credit (Wellness)

None yet.

Extra credit (Misc)

None yet.

Friday PSA

• There are people who care about you. Take care of yourself for their sake (as well for your own).
• Moderation. Decide what’s right for you; don’t give in to peer pressure.
• Consent is ESSENTIAL.

Course goals

• Where you first seriously exercise your skills as a computer scientist and as a software developer.
• As a computer scientist,
  • design and build algorithms
  • algorithms are mathematical formulae that you use to accomplish goals
  • revised: algorithms are sets of unambigious and terminating instructions that you use to accomplish goals
    • Goal: That we can use to solve many problems.
  • we often implement the algorithms (and learn from doing so)
  • analyze algorithms: correctness and efficiency
  • design and build data structures and ADTs
  • data structures are ways to represent or organize information (often with an understanding of how they are stored in memory)
  • ADT: Abstract Data Type - another way to think about structuring data.
  • ADT: Tend to describe what we do with the data.
  • Data Structures: Tend to describe how
  • We’ll look at both.
  • Learn about “the core literature”: (many of) the data structures and algorithms that every competent computer scientist should know about.
• Software developer
  • Collaboration
  • Collaborative version control systems (Git, GitHub)
  • Testing - Building your skills
  • Object-oriented programming
  • Experience building larger systems (or at least systems that require more than one or two files).

Course structure

• See the syllabus.
• We’re using mastery grading.
• Not everything is figured out.
• Tokens are available.
• Sam has office hours at random times, use the booiking software if possible.
• Sam responds to DMs and email.
• Warning! Sam is not as bad as PM, but he’s close. He’ll try to do better.
• How do we earn tokens? Use Gradescope.

Designing a stack ADT (an exercise)

Reminder: ADT is “abstract data type”, the “what” not the “how”.

• PUM
  • Philosophy: A stack is a collection of values with the Last-in, First-out policy
  • Uses (use cases): We would use a stack for …
    • Brazilian card games.
    • A stack of papers (e.g., grading)
    • Layering in winter.
  • Methods (procedures): These are the most important procedures to provide. Sam is a minimalist;
    • Add (push): in C, we’d write something like add(Stack *s, Value v); in Java. we’ll write s.add(v)
    • Empty: Is the stack empty. bool s.empty(). In Scheme, we could have used the much clearer empty?
    • Remove (pop): Remove and return the top thing on the stack Value s.pop().
    • NOT reverse; it’s not a core application (except for stacks used for Brazilian card games).
    • NOT list contents.
    • Look at the top element (top) Value s.top().
    • Is the stack full? (maybe) bool s.full().
    • Create the stack Stack buildStack(TypeOfData, size)
    • Eliminate the stack
• Side note: Write things down!

Last-minute Stuff

• Helpful note: I post these notes on our course Web site. Stay tuned.
• Less helpful note: I also post recordings.
• PSA: Covid is back on campus. Consider masking. Masks available in our classroom.