CMSC 131 | |
Sections 010X/020X/030X |
05/04/17 Regarding Project #7: If your submission produces extraneous text outputs (e.g. you are using System.out.print to trace program flow) you will probably fail lots of the tests. You should never submit a project that produces unexpected output.
05/03/17 Regarding Project #7: Somewhere in the code distribution it mentions public tests, but there aren't any public tests -- this was an artifact from a previous version of the project. Sorry for the confusion. To help you see how to create a fish pond for testing, click this link for an example of a JUnit test that creates a pond and does a simple test.
04/27/17 Project #7 has been posted. This is the last project so start early to ensure that you max out your score on it!
04/19/17 Our final exam will be on Monday May 15th from 4:00PM to 6:00PM. Please plan to arrive at 3:50PM. There are two different rooms, depending on section numbers. IF YOU COME TO THE WRONG LOCATION, YOU WILL BE TURNED AWAY. Check your class schedule carefully to ensure you are going to the right location, as indicated below. Note that section 0201 is not with the other 020X sections.
Sections Room Assignment 0101, 0102, 0103, 0104, 0201 CHM 1407 0202, 0203, 0204, 0301, 0302, 0303, 0304 BRB 1101
04/18/17 Some students didn't get Quiz #5 back yet, so solutions have been posted here .
04/13/17 Project #6 has been posted.
04/03/17 The final exam will be on Monday 5/15 from 4:00PM to 6:00PM. The location will be announced later (it will NOT be in our usual classroom).
04/03/17 Project #5 has been posted.
03/15/17 Project #4 has been posted.
03/08/17 There is a way to draw a line at the 80th column in the Eclipse editor, despite the bug which has prevented us from doing it in the past! This should help you to comply with the course requirement of keeping your lines shorter than 80 characters. Click here for instructions.
03/07/17 To see the grader's comments about style in your projects (including an explanation for why points were deducted), go to the submit server. Find the submission that should have been graded and click it. Find the link that says "Code Review" and click that. You should see comments from the grader scattered throughout your source code.
03/07/17 As I mentioned in class, I made a mistake with the due date for project #3 (it should have been due on Wednesday of next week.) I'm going to leave it as it is (due on the 21st), but I will be posting project #4 on Wednesday 03/15. Project #4 will be due on Sunday 04/02, so plan accordingly.
03/03/17 Project #3 has been posted!
02/27/17 Don't forget that the first exam is on Wednesday 3/1 in your discussion section. I posted a new set of study questions that you might want to take a look at before then.
02/18/17 Project #2 has been posted! This project will probably take you significantly more time than the previous one, so get started right away!
02/10/17 Project #1 has been posted! Click the "Projects" tab to see a link to the project description.
02/10/17 The Maryland Center for Women in Computing (MCWIC) is offering free tutoring for students who are enrolled in CMSC131. This service is available to all students. They are located in room AVW 3258. The drop-in hours are:
To request one-on-one tutoring, click this link.
- Monday: 12:30PM to 2:30PM
- Tuesday: 4:30PM to 6:30PM
- Wednesday: 5:00PM to 7:00PM
02/06/17 Discussions session reminders:
- If you have a laptop, please bring it to the discussion each time.
- There will be frequent quizzes and lab exercises (sometimes for a grade). These will not be announced -- you are expected to attend every class session.
02/02/17 Some slides on converting between different number bases are available here. You will need to authenticate using the same credentials you use to access the study questions. [Thanks to Eric Reasoner for preparing these slides.]
01/31/17 Fawzi's office has moved! I am now in room 3265 A. V. Williams building.
01/24/17 All students must attend the class sessions for which they are registered! This applies to both the lecture and discussion. The course is overbooked and so we will be enforcing this policy strictly. (Quizzes or in-class assignments handed in during the wrong class session will not be graded.)
01/24/17 Welcome to CMSC 131 for Spring 2017. Note that this website is for sections 010X/020X/030X only. Important announcements will appear here as the course moves along. Be sure to look every day.
This is a first programming course for Computer Science majors with a focus on object-oriented programming. The goal of the course is to develop skills such as program design and testing as well as the implementation of programs using a graphical IDE. All programming will be done in Java.
Course Coordinator: Fawzi Emad
Recommended Text:
There is no required book for this course. There are many excellent introductory books on programming in Java. One that
I can recommend is
Java Foundations
Older editions of this book are nearly identical to the latest edition, and you can find them sold cheaply online.
There will be eight programming projects and other assignments to be completed during the lab sessions. Some are considered "closed" assignments which you must complete by yourself and others are considered "open" assignments where collaboration is permitted. (More information about the open policy will be provided in class and can be found in the Policy Regarding Open/Closed Projects.) There will also be two midterms, a final exam, and occasional quizzes.
All assignments can be done on the machines of your choice. You are welcome to do the work on a home computer if you have one. There should not be any machine-specific dependencies in your code. If we are not able to run your program because there is a difference between your and our computer environments, you must work with us to get your program to work in our environment. You are expected to use the Eclipse IDE for all programming assignments.
All projects must be submitted before 11pm on the day they are due. They are to be submitted electronically according to instructions given with the assignments. Late assignments will be strictly penalized. Exceptional circumstances will be considered only if discussed with the instructor before the assignment is due. Late assignments will have points deducted as follows:
Final grades will be computed according the following weights. (These weights are tentative and subject to future adjustment.)
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Office hours get extremely busy the day before a project deadline. Therefore do not wait to start your projects. Regarding office hours and the TA Room:
You need to keep backups of your projects as you develop them. No extensions will be granted because you accidentally erased your project. Feel free to use the submit server as a backup tool by submitting often. You can also use tools like git, etc. Do not post code in any online system that is accessible to others (e.g., GitHub).
The following are examples of academic integrity violations:
The Department of Computer Science takes the student course evaluations very seriously. Evaluations will usually be open during the last few weeks of the course. Students can go to www.courseevalum.umd.edu to complete their evaluations.
Monday | Wednesday | Friday | |
---|---|---|---|
Week 1 01/23 |
Introduction to course; Course tools | Demo of Eclipse IDE; Computer systems overview; Hardware; Memory | |
Week 2 01/30 |
Operating systems; Software languages; What is Object Oriented Programming? | Why Java? Simple coding examples; Text output; Variables and assignment | Primitive types; Strings; Arithmetic operators; Comparison operators |
Week 3 02/06 |
Input via the Scanner; If and if/else statements; Logical operators | More details on if and if/else statements; Rules for Java identifiers | Camel case convention; Symbolic constants; while loops; do-while loops |
Week 4 02/13 |
For-loops; Blocks; Nesting of loops | Writing static methods; Increment/decrement; Other assignment operators | Rules of precedence; Short-circuiting; Widening/narrowing conversions; Intro to design |
Week 5 02/20 |
Intro to objects and classes; Instance members | Java memory model (call stack and heap); Garbage collection; equals method; Begin example of detailed Java class ("Student") | Continue "Student" example; Constructors; toString; equals |
Week 6 02/27 |
Review for Midterm | Midterm #1 in Lab More about static members vs. instance members |
Variable initialization; JUnit testing |
Week 7 03/06 |
Commenting; Call stack (frames, etc.); Java keyword "this" | Visibility; Encapsulation; "API" | Round-off errors; Intro to Java packages; Java libraries |
Week 8 03/13 |
Details of String class; Math class; break; continue | Exception handling (throw, try/catch) | TBA |
Week 9 03/20 |
Spring Break | ||
Week 10 03/27 |
More exception handling (finally); Begin review example: "Password" class | Continue "Password" example; Mutability; StringBuffer | Eclipse debugger |
Week 11 04/03 |
Arrays | More details on arrays; Arrays of references | Privacy leaks; Copying arrays (reference/shallow/deep copies); Two-dimensional arrays (ragged) |
Week 12 04/10 |
Review for Midtern | Rectangular two-dimensional arrays; Java interfaces; Polymorphism | Wrappers; Examples using Java interfaces |
Week 13 04/17 |
Complexity (Big-O) |
Midterm #2 in Lab Project design; Method overloading |
Continue method overloading; Ternary conditional operator |
Week 14 04/24 |
Switch statements; Command-line Java; Javadoc | Data structures; Syntax for using Java generic collections; Stack; ArrayList | For-each loops; Java packages; package visibility |
Week 15 05/01 |
Recursion | Recursion | Recursion |
Week 16 05/08 |
Review for final exam | Review for final exam |
Fawzi Emad
Email:
Office: 3265 A.V. Williams Building
Office Hours: Monday 12-1, Wednesday 11-12, Friday 1-2
Responsibilities | Office Hours | ||
---|---|---|---|
Carolin Arnold | Discussions 0103, 0202 | (See table below) | |
Janani Gururam | Discussions 0302, 0304 | (See table below) | |
Shravan Srinivasan | Discussions 0203, 0204 | (See table below) | |
Avery Katko | Discussions 0301, 0303 | (See table below) | |
Cameron Moy | Discussion 0101 | (See table below) | |
Sam Gollob | Discussion 0201 | (See table below) | |
Avital Ron | Discussion 0102 | (See table below) | |
Eric Reasoner | Discussion 0104 | (See table below) | |
Hadi Yami | Grader | ||
Dantong Ji | Grader | ||
Wilson Lin | Grader | (See table below) | |
Xioameng Jiang | Grader | ||
Kevin Wittmer | Office Hours Specialist | (See table below) | |
Michael Strauch | Office Hours Specialist | (See table below) | |
Rohan Chandra | Office Hours Specialist | (See table below) | |
Neal Gupta | Office Hours Specialist | (See table below) |
Students in sections 010X/020X/030X may visit
If you are in sections 040X then you must see a TA who has been assigned to your sections -- see your class webpage or talk with your instructor.
All TA office hours take place in room 1112 A.V. Williams. Please note that a TA may need to leave 5 minutes before the end of the hour in order to go to his/her class. Please be understanding of their schedules.
MON | TUE | WED | THU | FRI | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
9:00 | Shravan | Janani | Shravan | Janani | |
10:00 | Rohan | Janani | Kevin | Janani | Eric |
11:00 | Sam | Carolin | Rohan | Carolin | Eric |
12:00 | Michael | Carolin | Michael | Carolin | Rohan |
1:00 | Neal | Avery & Sam | Neal | Avery | Michael |
2:00 | Avery & Neal | Kevin | Avery & Neal | Kevin | Kevin |
3:00 | Neal | Rohan | Neal | Kevin | Michael |
4:00 | Kevin | Avital | Rohan | Avital | Michael & Neal |
5:00 | Shravan | Cameron | Shravan | Cameron | Neal |
The following web pages provide detailed references to information about Java.
In order to complete the projects for this course you must install Eclipse following the instructions in the Eclipse Tutorial. Note that if you install Eclipse from some other source then you will not be able to submit your projects easily! After you get Eclipse installed, you will need to connect Eclipse to your class account. To the right is a screenshot of the information you will need to enter into the CVS connection dialog box during this process. You can cut and paste the following lines into the dialog box:
Be sure to change the connection type to "extssh", as shown. |
Below are collections of questions and practice problems that are designed to help you to learn the course material. These exercises are not being collected or graded. Answers are provided, but please try your best to solve each problem before looking at the solution! The list will be updated as the semester progresses.
Disclaimer: Your primary resource for studying should be the notes that you have taken during lectures! There will be questions on quizzes and exams that are not in any way represented in this study list. There will be questions on this study list that are not in any way represented on quizzes or exams. Please be aware that exam questions tend to combine more elements into a single question and many of the questions on the list are simpler than questions you will see on your exams. You may discuss these questions openly with anyone, including your classmates. If you are unsure about how the answer to any particular question is obtained, please drop by office hours for help. That's why we're here!
Part 1: | Questions | Answers |
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Part 2: | Questions | Answers |
Part 3: | Questions | `Answers |
Part 4: | Questions | Answers |
Part 5: | Questions | Answers |
Part 6: | Questions | Answers |
Part 7: | Questions | Answers |
Part 8: | Questions | Answers |
Part 9: | Questions | Answers |
Part 10: | Questions | Answers |
Part 11: | Questions | Answers |
Part 12: | Questions | Answers |
Part 13: | Questions | Answers |
Part 14: | Questions | Answers |
To submit a project, go to the "Java" perspective in Eclipse. Right click on the project folder (e.g., p1) and select "Submit Project" from the pull-down menu. If you do not see the "Submit Project" option then your copy of Eclipse does not contain the class plug-ins. In this case, please see the Eclipse installations instructions on the Resources page, or drop by TA office hours for help.
You may submit many times (we grade only the last submission). You can check the status of your submissions by visiting the Submit Server Home Page and entering your University Directory ID and password.
Important: Your grade for each project will be based on the greater value of two scores: (1) The score on the very last submission prior to the deadline; (2) The score minus 20% on the very last submission prior to the late deadline (up to 24 hours late).
Click the name of a project below to see the project specification.
Project Name | Due Date |
---|---|
Hello World! | Tuesday 02/07, 11:00PM |
Orioles Baseball | Sunday 02/19, 11:00PM |
Flags of the World | Monday 02/27, 11:00PM |
Medieval Soldiers | Tuesday 3/21, 11:00PM |
Mandelbrot Set | Sunday 04/02, 11:00PM |
Poker Simulator | Thursday 4/13, 11:00PM |
Cafe 131 | Thursday 4/27, 11:00PM |
Fish Club | Monday 5/08, 11:00PM |