MIME-Version: 1.0 Server: CERN/3.0 Date: Sunday, 24-Nov-96 22:49:36 GMT Content-Type: text/html Content-Length: 8757 Last-Modified: Thursday, 03-Oct-96 22:13:21 GMT Computer Science 212

Computer Science 212 Fall 1996

Course Information

August 29, 1996

CS212 is an introductory course covering a broad range of computer science concepts and techniques, including data abstraction, recursion, program correctness, generic functions, object oriented programming, pattern matching, and languages and their evaluators. We use the Dylan language, an object oriented dynamic language developed at Apple Computer, which is well suited for covering a broad range of introductory computer science topics. This is not a course about the Dylan language, it just happens to be the "notation" that we have chosen for writing programs. The major goals of the course are to teach students how to think clearly about programs and programming, and to provide a toolbox of modern programming techniques that will be applicable in any language.

What course to take: Students often wonder whether to take CS211 or CS212. CS211 focuses on programming skills in the object-oriented language Java, whereas CS212 provides exposure to a broad range of computational and programming problems, using a number of programming paradigms including functional, object-oriented and imperative programming techniques. If you have a good CS background or good formal skills (e.g., mathematics or physics) you should probably take CS212. Transfers between CS211 and CS212 (in either direction) are encouraged during the first two weeks.

Reaching Us

The best way to reach the course staff is by posting questions or comments using the CS212 Web site http://www.cs.cornell.edu/Info/Courses/Current/CS212/ This site contains all course materials, and runs a CoNote server which allows students and staff to post questions and answers as "annotations" to the handouts and problem sets. In order to access the Web site you will need to request a user-id and password for the CoNote system. To do this, simply go to the CS212 home page and follow the instructions. Your user-id and password will be created by Monday if you request them this week.

You can also reach the course staff is by sending email to cs212@cs.cornell.edu but this should not be used for asking questions about problem sets or handouts (use the Web site).

Who We Are

Dan Huttenlocher, Professor, 4119 Upson

Tobias Mayr, TA, 5148 Upson

James Hamblin, ugrad TA

Robert Szewczyk, ugrad TA

Justin Voskuhl, ugrad TA

Andras Ferencz, consultant

Melissa Ho, consultant

When We Meet

Lectures are Tuesday and Thursday at 10:10, in B11 Kimball and recitations are Monday and Wednesday at 1:25, 2:30 or 3:35. Recitations expand on the material in lecture, and provide more opportunity to ask questions.

Consulting hours, for help with problem sets or other questions, will be held from 7pm until midnight the two evenings before each problem set is due (see schedule below). Thus for problem sets due on a Tuesday there will be consulting hours Sunday and Monday evenings and for those due on a Thursday there will be consulting hours Tuesday and Wednesday evenings. Consulting hours are in the public Mac lab in B7 Upson.

Office hours are: James Hamblin TBA, Dan Huttenlocher T 1:00-2:00, Tobias Mayr F 12:15-1:15, Robert Szewczyk TBA, Justin Voskuhl TBA.

Course Materials

There is no textbook for this course. There will be course handouts and lecture notes, which will be available both in hardcopy and on the course Web site.

The Dylan interpreter is available free on the course Web site, and was developed by Justin Voskuhl for this class. It is implemented in Java, and thus will run under any Java capable Web browser. The best current browser (it changes almost weekly) is Netscape 3.0 for Windows95/NT, which has Borland's just-in-time Java compiler. There are also standalone versions available that you can download onto your computer if you do not want to use the Web browser version. One word of warning: if you download a standalone Dylan onto your machine, make sure that you are using the most recent version by checking the web site.

Course Requirements

Students are responsible for all material in the assigned readings, as well as that covered in lectures and in recitations. There will be six problem sets, two preliminary exams, and a final exam (a schedule is given below). Each problem set will be a combination of written exercises and a programming assignment. Course grades will be based on a combination of the problem sets and exam scores. The problem sets will account for approximately one half of the total grade. No late assignments will be accepted (we will generally grade assignments immediately and return them the following class period).

You should try to complete the programming assignments early, as we will not accept late work. The best use of your time and the machine's time is to think about the problems before sitting down at the computer. [No matter how many times we say this, it takes a long time to sink in; think about the problems before sitting down at the computer.]

Policy on Joint Work

Much of the learning in this course comes from doing the programming problems. You may work jointly with one other person on the assignments (no more than two people should work together). However, if you work together with someone, you must submit a single joint assignment with both names on it. Under no circumstances may you hand in work done with (or by) someone else under your own name. If in doubt, credit the person(s) from whom you got help. You would be amazed at how easy it is to tell when people work together on problem sets, so please don't make life unpleasant for all of us by breaking these rules.

Public Lab Facilities

CIT and various colleges on campus provide public Macintosh and PC facilities, you may use your own machine or the public ones. The CS department does not provide computer facilities for this course. The course consultants will be available in the B7 Upson Mac lab (see above).

Problem Set Due Dates and Exam Dates

All problem sets are due before 2am on the due date. For example, an assignment due Tuesday must be submitted electronically to the course server by 2am on Tuesday (that is late Monday night). No late assignments are accepted, so make sure you submit your final solution by the correct time and date.

[9/12] Assignment 1

[9/24] Assignment 2

[10/8] Assignment 3

[10/17] Prelim 1, 7:30pm

[10/29] Assignment 4

[11/12] Assignment 5

[11/19] Prelim 2, 7:30pm

[12/5] Assignment 6

[12/19] Final Exam -- see exam schedule

Lecture Outline

[8/29] The Study of Computation, and an Introduction to Dylan

[9/3] Function Abstraction and the Substitution Model of Evaluation

[9/5] Procedures and Processes: Iteration, Recursion and Induction

[9/10] Higher Order Procedures: Functional Arguments and Values

[9/12] Analysis of Algorithms: Orders of Growth

[9/17] Data Abstraction: Structures, Contracts and Implementations

[9/19] Hierarchical Data: Lists, Trees and the need for Quotation

[9/24] Recursive List Processing and Reasoning about Lists

[9/26] Symbolic Differentiation: An Extended Example

[10/1] Generic Operations: Type Dispatching and Generic Functions

[10/3] Generic Operations: Polynomial Arithmetic System

[10/8] Assignment and the Environment Model of Evaluation

[10/10] Assignment and Local State Variables

[10/17] Objects with State and Object Oriented Programming

[10/22] Object Oriented Programming and Inheritance

[10/24] Multimethods and More About Object Oriented Programming

[10/29] Mutable Data: Stacks and Queues

[10/31] Mutable Data: Heaps, Heapsort and Priority Queues

[11/5] The Metacircular Evaluator: Dylan in Dylan

[11/7] Variations on Expression Evaluation

[11/12] Compilation and Optimization

[11/14] Streams

[11/19] Infinite Streams

[11/21] Nonlocal Exits: Catch and Throw

[11/26] Garbage Collection and the Illusion of Infinite Memory

[12/3] Topics in CS: Randomization and Quicksort

[12/5] Topics in CS: Computability