CS/COE 0401 Fall 2008 Course Announcements

 

These announcements will be updated frequently.  Please access this page often so you will always be up-to-date

 

November 15, 2008

 

I have put the grading sheet for Assignment 4 online.  Take a look at it to see how many points each of the various requirements will be worth.  See the Assignments page.

 

 

November 14, 2008

 

Some important reminders / announcements:

·         As mentioned in lecture, QUIZ 2 will be given next week (November 17-20) during your lab sessions.  Plan accordingly!  See the online syllabus for material covered in the quiz.

·         Next Wednesday November 19 at 4PM in SENSQ 5317 there will be a CS Careers Panel sponsored by the CS Industry Board.  The goal of this panel is to discuss / show the various career opportunities available to computer science students.  I strongly encourage all students to attend this panel!  We will have a signup sheet at the event – if you attend you will receive 1% extra credit toward your overall grade.  This may not seem like too much but it is equivalent to 4 points on an exam or 16 2/3 points on a program.  Refreshments will be served!

·         Labs during the week of Thanksgiving will be canceled.  Lab 11 (the final graded lab) will be given during the first week of December

 

October 27, 2008 3PM

 

I REALLY want everyone to get this assignment working.  I know it is tough and some of the issues are conceptual and tricky.  Therefore, I am waiving the late penalty.  The due date is unchanged, but if you submit by the late date (next Monday, November 3) you can still receive full credit.

 

I will talk about a few issues tomorrow in lecture as well.

 

Keep trying and you will get it!

 

 

October 27, 2008

 

Some of you are having trouble understanding the relationship between your PlayerDB class, your Player class and the main program in Assignment 3.  Let me try to clarify this somewhat.

 

Player class:  This is still the entity the represents a Player of the game, and which should have the necessary data and methods to represent everything the Player needs.  Think of everything that makes up a Player – these should be your data.  Think of everything that a Player should comminicate to the outside world or which should be able to modify a Player – these should be your methods.  If you had a method in the Player class to read in the Player data from a file, you can still use this, but you will need to modify it somewhat.  This is because the file itself should be opened in the PlayerDB class – however, as explained below, the actual input can still be done via the Player class if you wish.

 

PlayerDB class:  This is a class to represent a collection of Players – namely the Players who will be playing a game of Over and Under.  The methods shown in PlayerDB.java are the minimum that you must implement.  You may add methods to this class, but you must keep in mind that the PlayerDB should not know anything about the actual game being played (i.e. it should not know that Over and Under is being played).  The purpose of PlayerDB is to store and provide Player objects to whoever needs them (i.e. the main program).  It should not know or care what they are being used for.  Regarding the readFromFile and saveToFile methods, the idea behind them is that an initially empty PlayerDB will be filled from a file via readFromFile and an updated PlayerDB will be saved back to a file via saveToFile.  Within those methods, you are certainly free to “pass the buck” to the individual Player objects if you would like.  So, for example, readFromFile may look something like this:

 

create a Scanner, s, on the appropriate input file

while there is still data in s

            create new Player object, p

            p.readData(s)

            add p to the end of the array

 

You don’t have to do it this way, but the important thing is that object-oriented programming gives you the flexibility to have the PlayerDB read in the Players in the general sense but in the specific sense each Player is in fact reading in its own data.

 

Main program:  This is where the game is being played.  The main program must utilize the PlayerDB to get the individual Player objects for each round of the game.  It must also create new Players if needed and update the PlayerDB (i.e. addPlayer) with them.  It is using PlayerDB as a resource so it doesn’t have to worry about managing the Players itself.

 

If you are having trouble keep working on it and definitely ask questions!

 

 

October 24, 2008

 

Important Announcements:  I left a required method out of the PlayerDB.java file.  Please DOWNLOAD THIS FILE AGAIN, so you have the new method.  The method in question is saveToFile(), which is needed to update the file at the end of the program.

 

Both readFromFile() and saveToFile() can produce an IOException and the compiler will flag them unless the exception is handled.  To prevent this problem, I have inserted a try / catch block into the code.  Make sure you put your code inside this block.

 

 

October 9, 2008

 

Some Important Announcements:

·         As mentioned previously, the Lab Schedule for next week (Oct. 13-17) is unusual due to the Monday holiday and having Monday classes on Tuesday.  See the October 3 note below for details.

·         I will not be in next Wednesday, Thursday or Friday (Oct 15-17).  A TA will proctor your exams for you.  If you have any clarification questions about the exam while you are taking it, be sure to ask your TA!

·         To help answer questions you may have about the exams, I will have special office hours next week:

­   Monday:  1PM-3PM (even though this is a student holiday, the University will be open)

­   Tuesday: 10AM-11:30AM

Note that a study guide and some practice questions have been put online.  Look these over carefully, as they will be very helpful toward your studying.  If you have any questions after Tuesday morning, you can email them to me or see one of your TAs during office hours.

 

October 3, 2008

 

Some announcements, as mentioned in class Thursday:

 

Monday, October 13 is a holiday for students.  However, classes that would normally meet on Monday, October 13 will instead meet on Tuesday, October 14 (i.e. Tuesday October 14 will follow the Monday schedule).  Thus, the normal M1PM lab will meet on Tuesday, October 14 and the normal Tuesday 4PM lab will not be held the week of October 13-17.  The remaining labs for the week of October 13-17 (W11AM, W1PM, H4PM) will be open labs – no formal lab will be assigned but you are welcome to go to work or to ask questions of your TA.

 

Lab 6 is a graded lab, and has been posted. See the Labs link for details.  Note that the M1PM Lab for Lab 6 will be held on Tuesday, October 14 due to the holiday on Monday, October 13.

 

 

 

September 22, 2008 4:50PM

 

If you are using Windows Vista and are having problems with anonymous FTP, see the link below:
http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/Windows/en-US/help/2244170f-1fa3-418a-a203-1e2a8e5d8a3f1033.mspx

 

Note that SUBMISSIONS should be done via ANONYMOUS FTP, NOT regular FTP.  You should NOT login with your Pitt ID and password when submitting via ANONYMOUS FTP.

 

 

September 22, 2008 12:40AM

 

I have put a study guide online for Quiz 1.  Read it over so you can see how the quiz will be formatted and so you can see a few sample questions.

 

If you have problems submitting Assignment 1, email your files to me (don’t forget the Assignment Information Sheet!).  We will be a bit lenient with the submission of Assignment 1.  However, the remaining assignments must be submitted as specified, or you will lose 5 submission points.

 

 

September 17, 2008

 

Some announcements:

 

·         Due to a meeting I must attend tomorrow (Thursday) morning, I need to move my office hours to 12-1PM.  Please note this if you need to see me before class.

·         Quiz 1 will be given during Lab 4.  Look for Lab 4 to be posted on the Labs page within the next few days.

·         If you used Jbuilder or Eclipse to develop Assignment 1, make sure that your .java files will compile and run outside of the IDE!  You may have to modify your source files in order to achieve this.  For example, both IDEs automatically define a package and define the program within that package.  This should be shown in the first line of your source code.  If you delete this package declaration the program should work outside of the GUI environment.

 

 

September 10, 2008 11PM

 

I have put online some sample output and the grading sheet for Assignment 1.  See the Assignments page for details.  Use the sample output to see how some general cases and some special cases should be handled in the assignment.  Your output does not have to match this exactly, but it should be similar and equivalent.  Use the grading sheet to get an idea of the number of points for each aspect of the assignment.

 

 

September 10, 2008

 

Some announcements:

 

·         Today (Wed) in the 1PM lab there was a problem with logging into the lab machines.  We checked into this and apparently the server that authenticates Pitt ids is having some problems.  We hope that this will be fixed ASAP.  If you were unable to complete the lab because of this issue, I recommend trying it some time when you have a chance.  Kelli will also go over it again in next week’s Wed 1PM lab.

http://java.sun.com/javase/6/webnotes/install/jdk/install-windows.html

 

 

 

September 5, 2008

 

Some announcements:

·         US Steel Day is this Wednesday, September 10, 2008, from 10-3 in 5317 SENSQ.  For more information, see: http://www.cs.pitt.edu/undergrad/events.php

·         The CS Welcome Party is next Wednesday, September 17, 2008, from 11:45-1:30 in 5317 SENSQ.  For more information, see: http://www.cs.pitt.edu/undergrad/events.php

 

September 2, 2008

 

Joe Gallo, a Pitt CS graduate, will be giving a talk on how to use Eclipse as a development environment for Java.  If you are thinking of using Eclipse for your programming projects, you should not miss this talk!

 

When:  Thursday, September 4, 2008, at 6PM

Where:  5317 Sennott Square (Seminar Room)

Why: To learn more about Eclipse, and because there will be refreshments!

 

 

August 25, 2008

 

Welcome to CS/COE 0401 for the Fall 2008 Term (209-1).  Note that there are two sections of the CS 0401 course this term.  This Web site and these announcements pertain to BOTH sections.  If an announcement is particular to one section or the other I will note it.

 

Labs for the week of August 25-29 are cancelled.  The first lab sessions will meet the week of September 1-5.  See the lab schedule for more details.

 

Check back for more announcements.