CS 2301 B Term 2010
Systems Programming for Non-Majors

---

What this course is about

The goal of CS 2301 is to help students with prior program design experience migrate their skills to a model of programming where the programming language exposes details of how the hardware stores and executes software. This course is intended for non-computer science majors who wish to take upper-level courses in the systems area of the computer science curriculum. Recommended background and course topics are listed in the WPI undergraduate catalog course description

Course Outcomes

• Be able to design, implement, test, debug, and document programs in C
• Understand how a program in an imperative language transforms data by changing the contents of memory cells
• Be able to program with pointers and perform pointer arithmetic
• Be able to write programs that perform manual memory management
• Understand how the stack is used to implement function calls
• Understand low-level input and output routines
• Use Unix commands to manage files and develop programs

Mapping of course outcomes to CS Department Outcomes

---

Staff

Instructor: Glynis Hamel (GH)

Teaching Assistants: Paulo de Barros (PdB), Avani Shastri (AS)

Senior Assistant: Richard Brown (RB)

Office Hour Schedule

(Note: TA/SA office hours are held in FL A22 (Fuller sub-basement). Glynis Hamel's office hours are held in FL 132.)




Day/Time	10:00	11:00	12:00	1:00	2:00	3:00	4:00	5:00	6:00	7:00	8:00
Monday	GH	PdB	AS			AS	RB	PdB
Tuesday		RB				GH	RB
Wednesday
Thursday	AS	AS					PdB	PdB
Friday		RB			GH

(Glynis Hamel will also be available for office hours on Thursday by appointment)




Announcements, Class Discussion Board and Email

A discussion board for CS 2301 has been set up on myWPI . All students enrolled in the course have access to this discussion board. You should visit the discussion board and check the Announcements on myWPI on a daily basis.

If you have a question regarding your grades in the course, please send email to cs2301-staff *at* cs.wpi.edu. Mail sent to this address goes to the instructor and to the TAs. Include your section number in all correspondence.

The instructor's email address is ghamel *at* cs.wpi.edu. Please restrict your use of my personal email address to issues of a confidential nature. You will get a quicker response if you post your questions to the class discussion board.

---

Lecture and Lab Times

Lectures meet MTRF from 1:00-1:50pm   in HL116

Labs meet on Wednesdays according to the following schedule:

Section	Time	Location	TA
B01	2:00 - 2:50pm	HL 230
B02	3:00-3:50pm	HL 230

---

Textbook, Software, and Authors' Website

Textbook (required): Deitel, H. M., and P. J. Deitel, C How to Program, 6th edition, Prentice Hall, 2007. (If you find a used copy of the 5th edition, that's fine, too.)

Software: Assignments will be done on CCC machines running Linux. You can access these machines via an ssh client to ccc.wpi.edu from any lab on campus or from your own personal machine. We will be using the GNU C compiler (gcc). You will be given instructions on how to use the compiler during the lab sessions.

---

Grading

Exams (60%)

Three exams will be given. Exams are tentatively scheduled for November 11, November 30, and December 16. You must have a passing average on the exams in order to pass the course. (A passing average on the exams is usually around 65%. We may lower this threshold if the exam averages are low; the threshold will not be raised).

Exams are closed-book, closed-notes. You may bring in one sheet of notes (one paper, 8.5" x 11.5", both sides) to each exam. You may not use any computers, calculators, cellphones, or other electronic devices during the exams.

There are no makeups for exams. Absence from an exam will be excused only for medical or emergency reasons. A note from your doctor or from the Office of Academic Advising will be required. In such cases your final grade will be recorded as Incomplete and you will be allowed to take a makeup exam the next time the course is offered.

Homework (30%)

Six homework assignments will be given. Assignments will be due at 5pm on the due date. No extra credit or makeup homework assignments will be given.

Labs (5%)

Labs will be given during conference sections on Wednesdays. To get credit for a lab you must attend at your scheduled time, actively work on the assignment during the lab period, and use turnin to turn in your work at the end of the lab period. Each lab will be graded as either credit (1) or no credit (0). There are no makeups for labs.

In-class assignments (5%)

Several times during the term we will take a few minutes of class time for in-class group work. This will consist of one or two questions related to recently-covered lecture material or homework problems. Each group assignment will be graded as either credit (1) or no credit (0). At the end of the term five of these assignments will be chosen at random by the instructor, and these will count as 5% of your final grade. There are no makeups for in-class assignments.

---

Academic Honesty Policy

Please read WPI's Academic Honesty Policy.

Labs and In-class group work

Collaboration is encouraged for labs and in-class group work.

Exams and Homework

Exams and homework are to be done individually. You are encouraged to talk with others in a general way about homework assignments (what approach to take, for example), but any work you submit for grading must be your own. Some examples of situations that would be considered academically dishonest are
• two or more students write the solution or part of the solution to a homework assignment together
• all or part of a solution to a homework assignment is copied from another student (with or without that other student's consent)
• all or part of a solution to a homework assignment is copied from a book, journal, or website
• all or part of a solution to a homework assignment is copied from a solution to an assignment that was given in a previous offering of the course
• providing all or part of a solution to a homework assignment to another student

If you receive general help from another student or an outside source, that student or source must be acknowledged in the documentation accompanying your submitted work.

Cheating will not be tolerated. If you are unsure whether a given activity would constitute cheating, ask the instructor. Violations of the Academic Honesty Policy can result in an NR for the course, and violators will be subject to the procedures outlined in section 5 of the WPI Judicial Policy.

Late Policy

Late homework will be accepted within 24 hours of the due date. Each student will be allowed one late submission without penalty. Beyond that, late homework will incur a 25 percent penalty. Any homework turned in after the 24-hour grace period will receive a grade of zero. No extra credit or makeup homework assignments will be given.

Homework Submission Policy

Homework must be submitted using the Unix turnin program. Homework submitted by any other means (paper, email, etc.) will receive a grade of zero.

Students with Disabilities

Students with disabilities who believe that they may need accomodations in this class are encouraged to contact the Disability Services Office (DSO) as soon as possible to ensure that such accomodations are implemented in a timely fashion. The DSO is located in Daniels Hall.

---

Schedule

Note: the instructor reserves the right to change the order of topics or the dates of the exams, if necessary.

Week	Reading	Topics	Assignments
Oct 26 - 29	Chapters 1-4 Lecture 1 objectives Lecture 2 objectives Lecture 3 objectives	Course overview intro to I/O: scanf, printf Boolean expressions if-statement loops data types and casts compiling and executing C programs	Lab 1 (Wed, 10/27) Homework 1 (due: Tuesday, 11/2)
Nov 1 - 5	Chapter 5 (sections 5.1 - 5.10, 5.11-5.13, 5.15) Lecture 4 objectives Lecture 5 objectives Lecture 6 objectives Lecture 7 objectives	function definition function calls call-by-value documenting functions scope and storage class recursive functions	Lab 2 (Wed, 11/3) Homework 2 (due: Tuesday, 11/9)
Nov 8 - 12	Chapter 6 (sections 6.1 - 6.5, 6.9) Chapter 7 (sections 7.1 - 7.5) Lecture 8 objectives Lecture 9 Review: Sample Exam 1 Lecture 10 - Exam 1 Lecture 11 objectives	arrays Exam review/catch up Exam 1, Thursday, November 11 pointers simulating call-by-reference with pointers pointer arithmetic	Lab 3 (Wed 11/10) Homework 3 (due: Tuesday, 11/16)
Nov 15 - 19	Chapter 7 (sections 7.7 - 7.10) Chapter 8 (skim sections 8.3, 8.4) Lecture 12 objectives Lecture 13 objectives Lecture 14 objectives Lecture 15 objectives	pointers and arrays chars and strings C string functions arrays of pointers makefiles	Lab 4 (Wed 11/17) Homework 4 (due: Tuesday, 11/23)
Nov 22 - 23	Chapter 10 (sections 10.1 - 10.6) Chapter 11 Lecture 16 objectives Lecture 17 objectives Thanksgiving break	structs sequential- and random-access files	(HW4 due Tuesday, 11/20)
Nov 29 - Dec 3	Chapter 12 (sections 12.1 - 12.4) Lecture 18- Review: Sample Exam 2 Lecture 19 - Exam 2 Lecture 20 objectives Lecture 21 objectives	Exam review/catch up Exam 2, Tuesday, November 30 dynamic memory allocation linked lists	Lab 5 (Wed 12/1) Homework 5 (due: Tuesday, 12/7)
Dec 6 - 10	Chapter 12 (sections 12.5 - 12.7) Lecture 22 objectives Lecture 23 objectives Lecture 24 objectives Lecture 25 objectives	linked lists stacks, queues hash tables	Lab 6 (Wed 12/8) Homework 6 (due: Tuesday, 12/14)
Dec 13 - 16	Lecture 26 objectives Sample Exam 3 Lecture 27 - Review Lecture 28 - Exam 3	hash tables Exam review/ catch up Exam 3, Thursday, Dec 16	(HW6 due Tuesday, 12/14)


http://www.cs.wpi.edu/~cs2301/b10/index.html