Bryn Mawr College
CS 246: Introduction to Computing
Spring 2016

Last modified: Mon Apr 25 23:09:24 EDT 2016 Subject to change.

General Information
 

Text & Software
 

Syllabus and Schedule
 

Schedule (subject to change, check back for updates)
 

Course Policies
 

Communication

Attendance and active participation are expected in every class. Participation includes asking questions, contributing answers, proposing ideas, and providing constructive comments.

As you will discover, I am a proponent of two-way communication and I welcome feedback during the semester about the course. I am available to answer student questions, listen to concerns, and talk about any course-related topic (or otherwise!). Come to office hours! This helps me get to know you. You are welcome to stop by and chat. There are many more exciting topics to talk about that we won't have time to cover in-class.

Whenever you e-mail me, be sure to use a meaningful subject line and include the phrase "CS246" at the beginning of that line. Your e-mail will catch my attention and I will respond quicker if you do this. I make an effort to respond to e-mails within 24 hours on weekdays and 48 hours on weekends.

Although computer science work can be intense and solitary, please stay in touch with me, particularly if you feel stuck on a topic or project and can't figure out how to proceed. Often a quick e-mail, phone call or face-to-face conference can reveal solutions to problems and generate renewed creative and scholarly energy. It is essential that you begin projects early, since we will be covering a variety of challenging topics in this course.

Grading

Incomplete grades will be given only for verifiable medical illness or other such dire circumstances.

Submission and Late Policy

Late submissions will receive a penalty of 20% for every 0-24 hours it is past the due date and time (e.g., assignments turned in 25 hrs late will receive a penalty of 40%).

Exams

In lieu of exams this class will have a midterm and a Final Project. The final project will involve integrating an open source project into your project.

Study Groups

We encourage you to discuss the material and work together to understand it. Here are our thoughts on collaborating with other students:

• The readings and lecture topics are group work. Please discuss the readings and associated topics with each other. Work together to understand the material. We highly recommend forming a reading group to discuss the material -- we will explore many ideas and it helps to have multiple people working together to understand them.
• It is fine to discuss the topics covered in the homeworks, to discuss approaches to problems, and to sketch out general solutions. However, you MUST write up the homework answers, solutions, and programs individually without sharing specific solutions, mathematical results, program code, etc.  If you made any notes or worked out something on a white board with another person while you were discussing the homework, you shouldn't use those notes while writing up your answer.
• Under ABSOLUTELY NO circumstances should you share computer code with another student who is not in your group.  Similarly, you are not permitted to use or consult code found on the internet for any of your projects, unless it is a reference linked from this page or from the project page.
  

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Links
 

• Unix References
  
• Unix for Beginners
• Basic Unix Tutorial
• Unix FAQ
• Emacs References
• Emacs Tutorial
• Emacs howto
• A Guided Tour of Emacs
• The Emacs Manual