![]() Princeton University |
Computer Science 333:
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Thanks to everyone for really fine presentations.
By the way, the somewhat older generation in the back row was
mostly community auditors from various of my courses, some of whom you
will have recognized from this year. Most of them have technical
backgrounds in computing, and they have often had significant managerial
roles as well. When they tell me, as they did repeatedly, that they are
really impressed with your work, it means something.
Now all that's left is to turn it in by 5pm Tuesday 5/12. Here's the final submission information.
Lecture notes: 2/3 2/5 2/10 2/12 2/17 2/19 2/24 2/26 3/5 3/10 3/12 3/24 3/26 3/31 4/2 4/7 4/9 4/11 4/21 4/23 4/28 4/30
Assignments:   1   2   3   4   5  
Project: preliminary description (2/3) previous projects (2/3) comments from previous projects (2/3) project ideas (updated 2/14) more project info (2/16) design document template (2/22) OIT WebScript (3/10) SVN, etc. (3/10) Project group-TA mapping weekly meetings (3/24) xkcd on project scheduling project demo and submission information (4/5) Demo schedule for May 7 and 8
Readings: general bibliography language tutorials opinion piece on software tools regular expression matcher (from Beautiful Code) Epigrams in Programming Let's go scripting Web 2.0 Joel on Software SQLite testing SQL injection attacks SQL injection attacks DDJ on smartphones DDJ on Android Google C++ style guide Peter Weinberger Doug McIlroy's Virology 101 Dick Hamming's You and your research Michi Henning on APIs Josh Bloch on APIs Awk-C interface proposal
Old stuff: Newsgroup playlist survey campuscgi code for retrieving registrar data
Dates: All dates are subject to minor changes.
S M Tu W Th F S Feb 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 first class 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 assignment 1 due; preliminary project info 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 assignment 2 due 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 assignment 3 due Mar 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 assignment 4 due 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 project design doc due 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 spring break 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 assignment 5 due; first TA meetings this week 29 30 31 Apr 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 project prototype 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 alpha test 26 27 28 29 30 last class May 1 2 beta test 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 project presentations 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 Dean's date; project due 5pm 17 18 19 20 21 22 23
This is a course about the practice of programming, an attempt to expose students to the development of real programs. Programming is more than just writing code. Programmers must also assess tradeoffs, choose among design alternatives, debug and test, improve performance, and maintain software written by themselves and others. At the same time, they must be concerned with compatibility, robustness, and reliability, while meeting specifications. Students will have the opportunity to develop these skills by working on their own code and in group projects.
There will be two lectures each week. During the first half of the semester, there will be a modest-sized programming assignment each week, which should take perhaps 5 hours to complete. During the second half of the semester, students will work in groups of 3 to 5 on a project that will involve a significant amount of design and implementation.
COS 333 is about programming, not about a specific language. The course will assume that you are familiar with C and Java, and will include excursions into C++ and scripting languages like shells, Awk, Perl, Python and Javascript. There will be significant emphasis on tools, both how to use them and how they are designed and built. The course will use Unix more than Windows, but not exclusively. Students must be comfortable with C and Java programming and with Unix, and able to write modest-sized programs that work. COS 217 and 226 are prerequisites; you might take 333 while taking COS 226 but it's not a good idea unless you're a very decent programmer.
This is meant to be more than a laundry list, however. Each section will also discuss issues of design, implementation, testing, performance, portability, and other software engineering concerns, and these will also be part of the programming assignments. With luck there will be a couple of guest lecturers as well.
There is one required text: The Practice of Programming, by Kernighan and Pike; you should also know basic Unix tools and usage as described in, for example, The Unix Programming Environment. Other readings will be handed out in class or found on the Web. The books listed in this bibliography are also worth looking at; they cover a wide variety of material related to programming.
Lectures:
Tuesday and Thursday 11:00-12:20, Friend 006.
Professor:
Brian Kernighan,
311 CS Building, 609-258-2089, bwk at cs.princeton.edu. Depending on
class size, I may set up regular office hours once things get rolling;
alternatively, send mail to make an appointment, or just drop in if my
door is open, which it usually is.
Teaching Assistants:
Peng Jiang, pengj@, CS 103C, Fri 9:30-10:30 am
Matt Meola, mmeola@, CS 415, Thu 3:00-4:00 pm
Five programming assigments will be assigned during the first half of the term; each is intended to take about five hours, but is sure to take longer unless you are careful.
Assignments are together worth about 30-35 percent of the course grade. Assignments are due by midnight on Fridays unless there are extraordinary circumstances. For the record, extracurricular activities and heavy workloads in other classes don't count as "extraordinary", no matter how unexpected or important or time-consuming. Assignments will generally be posted on Tuesday and due at midnight on Friday 10 days later. This leaves enough time that I will be unsympathetic to requests for extensions.
The project will have frequent checkpoints along the way for which you will have to prepare status reports, preliminary designs, and the like. There will be a public presentation and demo at the end, a written writeup, and submission of a system for testing and evaluation. All of these are graded.
The project will be worth about 60-65 percent of the course grade; it will be shared equally among group members, with the possibility of negative adjustments for members who fail to contribute their fair share.
You must complete all assignments and project requirements to pass the course.
Regular class attendance is expected and class participation helps. Frequent absences are grounds for a failing grade regardless of other performance. This means you. |
Do not, under any circumstances, copy another person's program for an assignment. Writing code for use by another or using another's code in any form violates the University's academic regulations.
Examples of unacceptable behavior for assignments include:
The program you turn in must be your work. You may get help from the instructor or TA after you have started writing code, but not from other students. Computer science assignments are not like physics or math problem sets: there is no single right answer. Each student is expected to come up with his or her own individual solution.
If you plan to do something that you are not absolutely sure is legal, ask first. Ignorance of this policy will not be accepted as an excuse for your actions.
You are responsible for ensuring that your files are not readable by your classmates. We recommend doing your COS 333 work on your own machine or in a private subdirectory, i.e.:
% mkdir cos333 % chmod 700 cos333
Project groups are encouraged to share insights and information about how things work, how to get things done, and other aspects of programming knowledge.