What a lot of folks might call the class but as we ll see later, it s not entirely accurate.

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Madeleine Howard
5 years ago
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2 What a lot of folks might call the class but as we ll see later, it s not entirely accurate. 2

3 Class composition; note that while CS students are the largest group, they re still only about a quarter of the class no one should feel particularly alone here. 3

4 My office location (way up at the far corner of campus), Hardymon 228, as compared to the classroom in Whitehall and the lab room in Anderson. 4

Grade allocation for the class. Note that this is pretty much ordered by how important we feel everything is Programming and the Weekly Assignments at the top.

5 Grade allocation for the class. Note that this is pretty much ordered by how important we feel everything is Programming and the Weekly Assignments at the top. Tests below, and Attendance as something of a gimme for coming to class. Note that attendance will be kept by asking questions during class with clickers. Attendance will start on Sept. 4 th. The attendance questions will not be scored for your attendance grade simply answering them will give you credit for attendance. However if you get more than 80% correct over the course of the semester, you will get a 5% extra credit applied to your final grade. 5

6 This is a fancy way to say There are a hundred of you, and one of me (and three TAs). Alternately and cynically you could say it s a justification for unpopular policies. The main two of these being: - No electronic devices in class (with a specific exception for your clicker!). - Quite simply put, there are too many people in the class and not enough room to deal with it. I can t police reasonable use, and don t want students distracting other folks in the class, so phones stay in pockets and laptops/tablets stay in bags. - No late assignments (of any type) will be accepted. - With the number of students and staff and aggressive schedule for the material in the course, we just don t have the resources to manage it fairly. 6

7 Don t do it. Cheating includes copying other students work and clicking in for other students (or having them click in for you!). Minimum penalty for cheating is a zero for that assignment (note that for this purpose, Attendance counts as a single assignment) and the loss of a letter grade. 7

8 Why is something I m going to be talking about a lot in the class. It s a little word but a big question. I believe it is beneficial to your education to understand why you are asked to learn what you are asked to learn and I will do my best to explain this whenever I can. Do not feel afraid to ask any questions whether in class, in , or at my office. 8

9 Because and I say this without exaggeration it is one of the most powerful problem solving tools we, as a civilization, possess. We now possess machines which can process literally billions of calculations per second, and programming is the technique we use to harness this power. Regardless of field, there s something you can do with programming; the numbers of programs that have been written is nothing compared to the number of programs that will be written. 9

10 C++ is a notation. It s a notation we use to express complex ideas; it just happens that we have tools called compilers that can convert this notation into a form that computers can read and execute. But it s just a notation, and the important things to learn in this class are the concepts that we express through C++. Now, it deserves to be pointed out that the CS department teaches two classes in this particular notation, and the math department offers none in calligraphy but I assert that the difference is quantitative, not qualitative; the notation is less important than the ideas expressed. There are three reasons this class is in C++ - First (and least important, for the class), is that C/C++ is the dominant language for application development, and it s a benefit to students to leave their degree program with applicable experience for such things. - Second is much the same reason it s taught in English; everyone in the CS department speaks it (or some dialect) - Third (and most important) is that it is one of the handful of languages that fluidly expresses all of the concepts we are covering in the class. 10

11 This class is supposed to be taught from the engineering perspective. Classes offered by the CS department tend to fall in line with either an engineering or mathematical perspective, and this one falls firmly on the engineering side. 11

12 This is a pretty good question 12

13 We can look it up in the dictionary, but these definitions aren t terribly useful. 13

14 My definition: Engineering is the discipline of design within constraints while aware of imperfection. 14

15 Of course, in software engineering, we don t see all that many disasters when we don t pay enough attention to imperfection 15

This is an example of imperfection from the field of electrical engineering what we see here is two parts, and readings from an oscilloscope compounded over time.

16 This is an example of imperfection from the field of electrical engineering what we see here is two parts, and readings from an oscilloscope compounded over time. Note that while everything is within spec (not touching the blue symbols), the two parts render the signal slightly differently. Engineers spent a lot of time ensuring that these signals got around the imperfections inherent in the underlying circuitry, but the designers of these two parts did it in different ways. 16

17 In software engineering, the primary imperfection we deal with is in our own minds we make mistakes, and we attempt to engineer code such as to minimize the incidence of those mistakes, the impact of those mistakes, and make it easier to detect and fix them when they happen. C++ is a notation, and it s used to express ideas. A big part of software engineering is maximizing the clarity of expression of those ideas. 17

You re used to the concept of correct and incorrect code. There s another idea that s just as important well-engineered vs. poorly engineered code.

18 You re used to the concept of correct and incorrect code. There s another idea that s just as important well-engineered vs. poorly engineered code. While engineers like fancy words to describe what they do as much as the next guy, we also don t care to say long phrases when short words will suffice, so we tend to call wellengineered code good and poorly engineered code bad. It s important to note that good and bad are separate from correct and incorrect; you can certainly have code that is correct but bad. You can even have good code that is incorrect if there s a problem in the specifications (i.e., what the code is supposed to do) or the requirements for the code changes, you can write perfectly good code, but have it become incorrect by no fault of your own. The trick is that good code that becomes incorrect is much easier to change (and thus make correct) a big part of good code is modifiability. 18

These are notes for the third lecture; if statements and loops.

These are notes for the third lecture; if statements and loops. 1 Yeah, this is going to be the second slide in a lot of lectures. 2 - Dominant language for desktop application development - Most modern