CpSc 215 Syllabus -- Fall 2005

C++ Examples    (courtesy of Sarah Matzko)
Slides    (courtesy of Sarah Matzko)

Instructor:

Dr. James M. Westall
307 McAdams Hall
656-5868
westall@cs.clemson.edu

Office Hours:

M-W 10:00-12:00 a.m.

Teaching Assistants:

Scott Duckworth                           
duckwos@cs.clemson.edu            

 Frank Volny
 fvolny@cs.clemson.edu

Prerequisites:

The official prerequisite for this class is a grade of C or better in either CPSC 102 or CPSC 212. This class assumes that each student is already a competent Java (or C) programmer with familiarity with basic abstract data types (e.g., linked lists).

Objectives:

The objective in this class is for students to become competent in the C programming language and the use of the Unix operating system, and to impart a foundation for the C++ programming language. The objectives of the course of the course are further described here .

Textbooks:

  • Kenneth A. Reek, Pointer on C , Addison Wesley, 1998.
  • Arnold Robbins, Unix in a Nutshell (Third Edition) , O'Reilly, 1999.
  • Mark Weiss, C++ for Java Programmers, Pearson Prentice Hall

Grading:

The final grade for the course will be computed based upon the following distribution (To earn a grade of C or better in the course it is necessary to make at least a C in the Lab and to have at least a 50 average in the project component of the course).

Quizzes

20%

Labs

20%

Projects

30%

Midterm

15%

Final Exam

15%

Attendance

Class attendance is encouraged but not required. A quiz will be given at the end of nearly every class. Two makeup quizzes will be given at the time of the final exam, but no other makeups will be given. It is acceptable for a student to arrive near the end of class to take the daily quiz. Disruptive behavior including, but not limited to sleeping and excessive talking, is not permitted in class and will be penalized by  loss of credit on daily quizzes.

Projects and Deadlines

Project work will consist of both short programs and major raytracing projects.   

Work is due at  the date and time specified. However, due to their size, major projects will be accepted with a penalty of N2 where N is the number of days late.

Short programming assignments that are late will not be accepted!  At least one short programming assignment grade will be dropped.

Labs

The lab is required for this course. http://www.cs.clemson.edu/~lab215. You must receive a C or better in lab to pass the course with a grade of C or better.

Academic Integrity

Unless otherwise specified in an assignment, you are expected to work independently on all projects and labs. Any discussion of any assigned work with any persons except Dr. Westall and the teaching assistants is a violation of this policy. Any use of any code not originally written by you is similarly prohibited. The University Policy on academic integrity will be followed for this course. Cheating will be taken very seriously, resulting in harsh penalties.

Students who observe other students cheating are strongly encouraged to report it to Dr. Westall.   A student making a report that leads to a conviction or a confession of cheating will receive 10 points extra credit on the assignment.  Some "curving" is commonly done in the assignment of final grades. Therefore, it may be the case that if students successfully inflate their own grade via undetected cheating, they may well simultaneously be deflating yours!!

Help with debugging

If you need help on a program, e-mail a TA for this class or the class instructor. However, debugging is a skill that can be developed only by practice. It is not the TA's job nor the instructor's job to find minor bugs in your program. If you are genuinely stuck, we will be willing to help you if your code employs the design approach described in class. If you write your program with an approach that is a complete departure from the approach described in class, you are responsible for fixing your own resulting problems.  

If you need assistance from Dr. Westall,  you should create a .tar file that contains ALL ELEMENTS needed to build the program along with an input data file that causes the failure and e-mail it to Dr. Westall. 

Cancelled class

If the university cancels classes on the day of a scheduled test, the test will be rescheduled.

Instructor Late

If the instructor is late for class, students are expected to wait for 15 minutes after the class period starts before leaving.