Thursday, January 29, 2009

Codewalk reports

Every week, starting from today, I will upload a file with each student's code-walk detailed deduction points. You can find your codewalk reports for set 1 and 2 in the corresponding folders in your pair's repository.

Just as an indication of you performance so far, the average grade is 20/30 for set 1 and 42.5/60 for set 2.

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Probably no office hours Wed 1/28

Given the impending snowstorm, I will probably not be in for office hours tomorrow, Wednesday 1/28. I hope that isn't a problem.

If I arrive later in the day, I will post my availability on the blog.

Otherwise, stop by on Thursday; I should be available from 10 to 12.

--Prof. Wand

Codewalks and Design Recipe

Advise on codewalks:

-- Make a real index card with the design recipe steps (not a piece of paper).
-- Copy the various strategies at the back of your card.
-- Copy the content of this page at the back of your card.
-- Structure your presentation around the content of your index card.
-- Make sure to answer all the questions on your index card in the order they appear on your card.
-- Add sufficient documentation to your code as a guide to your presentation (annotate your examples and tests, write the strategy comment, write concise purpose statements).
-- Bring with you your index card (I will ask for it).
-- Use it during the presentation if you get stuck.

And finally practice your talks with your partner before coming to the codewalks...

Drill Club

Drill Club has moved to Tuesdays at 6pm @ WVH164

Saturday, January 24, 2009

Now hear this: templates are now deliverable

On problem set 1, many of you seemed to be unclear about the use of design strategies and templates. So, effective with problem set 2, you will be required to specify both the design strategy and the template for each procedure.

Your template should be delivered in a form like that in the book. For example, if your function consumes a structure, then you should deliver a template like that in Section 6.5 of HtDP ("Designing Functions for Compound Data"). Of course, your template will be the one that goes along with your design strategy, not necessarily the compound data strategy.

Your template must match your stated design strategy, and your code must match your template.

We will be checking to make sure that your solutions meet this criterion.

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Codewalks

The codewalks schedule for the first weeks of the course is as follows:

Thursday afternoon @ WVH 164

5:30 - 6:00 pair 3: Jason Letourneau - Denis Kransnitskiy
6:00 - 6:30 pair 1: Lucas Peter Callado - Rohith Shivankumar
6:30 - 7:00 pair 2: Chander Shivdasani - Bansari Ghedia
7:00 - 7:30 pair 4: Geetha Rasamsetti - Richin Jain

Each pair gets a half an hour slot. You should be prepared for a 15 minutes joint presentation of one of the problems from the week's homework assignment. We will pick one of the partners to start the presentation and then we will switch to the other one. We will choose the problem but we will not publish our decision. So you need to be prepared to present any problem from the assignment. After your presentation there will be a round of questions on your solution and feedback on your performance.

Advice1: Always follow the design recipe while coding and presenting.

Advice2: Practice your presentation with your partner.

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Problem Set 1 is posted

Problem Set 1 is now out; you can follow the link from the main page.

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Please get CCIS username

If you do not already have a CCS login, please get one NOW. You will need it for Thursday's lab.

You can get the form for a login by going to the hallway outside 310 WVH (the systems office) and following the directions carefully, including both front and back.

Last night's examples, compose-vertical

The examples from last night's lecture are now on the web site. Follow the link from the syllabus page.

You should look particularly at compose-vertical.ss . The code we had last night was wrong: it composed the images in the wrong order-- something I couldn't tell because I had used bad names-- rect1 and rect2 instead of red-rect and green-rect. Had I used better names for the test data I would have seen immediately that the images were appearing in an order opposite from what I had intended. (Test everything! (and examine your tests closely!)).

I've also included a function compose-vertical-scene, which does the same thing for scenes. Look at the documentation for the World teachpack to learn about scenes. You'll need to do this for the problem set anyway.

--Prof. Wand