Course Staff

• Steven "Steve" Wolfman <wolf@cs.ubc.ca>
  Office hours (begin Sep 9): Mon 1030–1230 in ICCS X350 (your lab, NOT my office), Thu 1030–1230 in ICCS 239 (my office) or by appt
  I have an open door policy: if my door is open, come in and talk to me!
  Note: call me Steve, but if you must, use my title: Wolfman
  
  
• Zachary "Zach" Drudi <zdrudi@cs.ubc.ca>
  Office hours (begin Sep 10): Wed 12–1, Fri 1–2 in DLC

• Francisco "Pax" Escalona <pax@cs.ubc.ca>
  Office hours: Tue 1600–1700, Fri 1530–1630 in DLC

• Erik Shadwick <erik.shadwick@gmail.com>
  Office hours: Mon 12:30–2:00, Thu 12:00–1:30 in DLC

Exams

• Midterm #1: Tue, 8 Oct, 1900–2130, in CHBE 101 (see Grade Calculation for info about missed exams)
• Midterm #2: Tue, 5 Nov, 1900–2130, in CHBE 101 (see Grade Calculation for info about missed exams)
• Final: 16 Dec 1200–1430; in LSK 201

Lectures and Tutorials

Lectures are MWF 900–1000 in DMP 110. Tutorials are Tuesdays 1100–1200 in ICCS X251, 1300–1400 in ICCS X350, and 1400–1500 in ICCS X350.

We will write code on the fly and collaboratively in lectures. So, bring your active curiosity to class.. and your computer if you can! Do the reading (which means trying the exercises!) beforehand or expect to be left quickly behind.

Tutorials will also explore course concepts hands-on and on the fly. Tutorial material will sometimes supplement and sometimes reinforce lecture.

Come to tutorials prepared, having read assigned readings and attempted (or completed!) the current assignment. Those with laptops may want to bring them, although the tutorial room has desktop computers.

Course Materials

• Required Textbook: Programming Languages: Application and Interpretation, 2nd Edition by Shriram Krishnamurthi.
  
  We will closely follow this text. It's available for download, at zero cost.
   
• We will start out assuming you are familiar with the Racket (a descendant of Scheme) programming language. Get started learning it immediately!

  The following books/references are helpful but not required for that:

• How to Design Programs by Mattias Felleisen, Robert Findler, Matthew Flatt, and Shriram Krishnamurthi, MIT Press, 2001. (available online)
• Teach Yourself Scheme in Fixnum Days by Dorai Sitaram (available online)
• The Little Schemer by Daniel P. Friedman, Matthias Felleisen, Duane Bibby, and Gerald Sussman, MIT Press, 1996.
• The Seasoned Schemer by Daniel P. Friedman, Matthias Felleisen, Duane Bibby, and Gerald Sussman, MIT Press, 1996.

Also see our Assignments page.

• Another Optional Text: Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (2nd Edition) by Harold Abelson, Gerald Jay Sussman, and Julie Sussman, MIT Press, 1996.
  
  Available online. This is sort of an introductory programming book, sort of a programming languages book, and entirely an amazing book.
   

Software

Most of our programming will be in Racket using its DrRacket environment. DrRacket is installed on the department machines, and is available for free download. See Assignments page for more information on getting set up.

Assignments

People learn by doing, not listening. We will have regular assignments.

Read and adhere to the very open but absolutely required collaboration policy. See individual assignments for rules regarding teamwork.

No late submissions will be accepted. Thus, we can release solutions right away, which gives you a chance to get feedback when it counts. In extenuating circumstances, contact your instructor immediately, preferably in advance, and we may waive the assignment. Submissions that do not properly acknowledge collaborators and sources will receive zero marks and result in an official misconduct investigation.

Coding Style

A key theme of this course is expressiveness in programs. Thus, we require you to write code that is clean, concise, elegant, tested and appropriately documented. A substantial fraction of your grade on programming assignments will be based on these qualities. In particular:

• All functions must have a purpose statement that fully explains, in a sentence or two, what the function does.
• All functions must have typed (in plai-typed or have contracts specified otherwise).
• If you need to use a new type, define a new datatype to represent it. Do not overload lists. Understand the difference between lists and datatypes. Lists are homogenous collections of unlimited extent. In contrast, datatypes are heterogenous collections with a fixed number of members.
• As a general rule, all functions should be no longer than what fits on a screen. We will of course relax this for functions with a lot of pattern matching (parse comes to mind) and in that case recommend that each match case fits on a screen.
• Assume that your reader understands Racket/Scheme, so, in any inline comments, explain why you wrote the code, don’t explain what you wrote.

Test Cases

All functions must have unit tests that exercise the functions'.. um.. functionality. This is good software development practice but, more importantly, documents that you grok your code. We will not give full credit to untested functionality, even if it is correct.

Good test cases:

• Test a single aspect of a single feature. Therefore, you will need multiple test cases per feature to ensure its correctness.
• Actually test the program. Testing means not only executing the program but also checking the output to ensure it is what you expected.
• Have a (brief) comment to explain their purpose.

When writing test cases, resist the temptation to make them massive and complicated (so they “must be testing something”). Instead, write small, clean tests with clear purposes. A mega-test may expose errors you haven't yet tested for, but if your mega-test fails, figure out which aspect failed and write a focused test for that.

It's a fabulous learning exercise to try to create a parsimonious test suite. Try doing it carefully and intentionally a few times, and you'll find yourself more able to do it automatically in the future. You'll also have a clearer sense of the core functionality you want from your code.

Collaboration Policy (for assignments)

• Where teams are allowed (see individual assignments for rules on team formation), students may work as they wish within their team (but see our guidelines). Except in extraordinary circumstances, a team makes a single shared submission and receives a single shared mark.

• Consultation with the course staff, the course's posted assignment handouts and lecture/tutorial notes, the textbook, and DrRacket's language help is unrestricted. (You should still acknowledge copied code and quotes.)

• All other collaboration, including consultation of physical or online resources, is encouraged subject to the following rules:
  1. Acknowledge all collaborators—by name and with a brief description of their contribution—in a README.txt file in multiple-file submissions or in comments at the top of your file/document in single-file submissions.
  2. Besides the collaborator names/descriptions you need for acknowledgments, you may not take any record away from the collaboration. Neither should you circumvent this rule through rote memorization or running-out-and-writing-stuff-down. (Destroy such records (e.g., discard annotated sheets of paper, erase whiteboards, shatter stone tablets) to avoid violating these guidelines because someone exploited your notes later.)
  3. Collaboration outside your team may not happen over a computer. (Use a whiteboard instead!)

     Exceptions: (1) You may access online resources (like the textbook) from a computer, but treat them like written resources. Metaphorically, if the assignment were a closed-notes exam, the resources would be notes you can review before but not during the exam. (2) In cases when you "hit a wall" debugging, you may get brief debugging help over a computer, acknowledging as usual. However, your debugging helper may not type on or otherwise control your team's computer (because that's your job!), and both your team and your debugging helper's team are responsible if we find that one of you copied the other's submission or otherwise violated this policy. (3) You may take notes away from classwide discussions or group discussions arranged by the course staff. (Acknowledge classwide discussions by just citing the event name, e.g., tutorial T1A.)

(Can you access sites like Course Hero? Technically yes, but please do not, as such sites contribute little to your learning. If you ignore this advice, bear in mind that you must acknowledge the sites you use and may not "take notes away". So, you have committed academic misconduct if you use such a site but do not acknowledge it or if you copy material from such a site, regardless of acknowledgement.)

These rules encourage collaboration that helps you learn. Nonetheless, submissions that follow these rules will not display the unusual properties that, under stricter rules, suggest academic misconduct. Thus, we will vigorously—but with great disappointment and annoyance—prosecute submissions that display these unusual properties.

Collaboration Recommendations

When you collaborate outside your team, follow the "Gilligan's Island Rule" (thanks to Larry Ruzzo, who inspired the whole collaboration policy): After discarding notes from a collaboration, spend at least an hour doing something at least as mindless as watching Gilligan's Island. If you can recreate your insights after such a mental emetic, you probably truly learned.

When you work with your team, work together rather than "cutting up the problem" and working separately. (We may use code reviews and will use exams to enforce individual accountability for assignments.) To increase productivity and improve learning, use pair-programming techniques (of the form preached by Extreme Programming). Pair-programming in a nutshell:

• Both programmers share a single computer, monitor, and keyboard.
• One person is the typist, the other watches what is being typed and critiques it.
• Programmers switch roles at regular intervals. (Note that this is also good for preventing RSI!)
• Both programmers jointly own every single line of code, regardless of who typed it.

Plan ahead to schedule the face-to-face time this requires!

Communication

Most material will be distributed from the course web page http://www.ugrad.cs.ubc.ca/~cs311/. The Piazza site is for announcements and discussion boards. We will likely also use Connect to distribute grades and a few restricted access handouts (though we may find another way to do that). You are responsible for keeping up with announcements in lecture and (at least once every "business" day) with the Piazza announcements.

Within the confines of the collaboration policy, use the Piazza for everything. You can even broach private matters if you're careful to mark your question/post private. We all benefit from that! However, please e-mail the teaching staff (see Course Staff) when you need us.

Missing Lectures, Tutorials, and Exams

You are required to attend all scheduled lectures, tutorials, and the final exam. If you miss a lecture or tutorial, catch up. Use (at least) the website, friends, the discussion boards, and office hours to do so. If you miss the final exam, you must follow the procedures defined in the Academic Concession Policy.

(What if you miss a midterm? This course is an odd duck. See Grade Calculation.)

Grade Calculation

Course components are weighted as follows:

Assignments:	30%
Midterms:	30%
Final:	40%

The instructor reserves the right to modify these weights (but does not anticipate exercising that right).

You must pass the final exam to pass the course. If you fail the final, your course grade will be no higher than 45%.

Each assignment will have equal weight, and we will drop your lowest assignment mark.

Each midterm exam will have equal weight. Weird stuff: Your calculated mark for each midterm will be the maximum of the midterm mark you earned and the final exam mark you earned. Thus, midterms are effectively optional, and no special action is required if you miss them, but let me know if you miss for an excusable reason so that I can make a minor statistical adjustment that may get you a few more points. But write the midterms! (Nu, it couldn't hurt.)