CS 108 Access CHS Fall 2009
Orientation to Computer Science

CS 108 Links:

• The Syllabus contains an abstract about the course its objectives, textbooks, and method of grade evaluation. The course syllabus is consistent with the Computer Science Department's Comp 108 Student Learning Outcomes.
• Reading assignments
• Lecture notes
• Schedule for assignments
• Examples
• Resources

Web CT will be used in this class for announcements, and discussions. You can also monitor your grades in the class. Web CT info:

• Web CT login. Use this to create your myWebCT account (one time) and thereafter to login to WebCT.
• How to use WebCT disucssion pages.

Reading Assignments

• Alice 2.2 tutorials 1, 2, 3, and 4.
• Check out the alice.org FAQ and Community sites
• Readings from Dick Baldwin's on-line tutorials Learn to Program Using Alice
  • Getting Started: lessons 100, 105, 110, 115, 120, 125, 130
  • Functions, variables, methods: lessons 135, 140, 145
  • Structured statements: lessons 160, 165, 170, 175
  • Collections: lessons 180, 185.
  • Events, interactive programs: lesson 190

Lecture Notes and Quizzes

• Introduction and history
• Beginning Alice updated 9/23/09
• Blocks: methods, functions, structured statements
• Quiz 1 evaluation
• Types, functions, collections (arrays, sorts) updated 11/23/09
• Algorithm design / evaluations for project 2 tag
• Quiz 2 evaluation
• events, NPC movement, collisions updated 11/23/09

Schedule

Task	Due Date	Description
Project 1	10 / 7 / 09	QuestionsWorld.pdf project specification.
Project 2	11 / 4 / 09	tagProject2.pdf project specification. update #1 9/12/09 starterTag.a2w starter file update #1 9/12/09 You need to save this file. In browser right click on link and "save link as" or "save target as" -- depending on your browser. Or, you can bring a USB drive to class for a copy.
Midterm (25%)	11 / 9 / 09	Midterm study guide graded midterm
Project 3	12 / 14 / 09	manyTagProject3.pdf project
Final (35%)	12 / 16 / 2009

Examples

To avoid any misunderstanding by anyone (aka a student in one of my classes), the following disclaimer has been patterned from a Microsoft web page and is applied to code found herein or on any of Professor Barnes' web pages.

WARNING: ANY USE BY YOU OF THE CODE PROVIDED IN THESE WEB PAGES IS AT YOUR OWN RISK.

Professor Barnes provides this code "as is" without warranty of any kind, either express or implied, including but not limited to the implied warranties of merchantability and/or fitness for a particular purpose.

Professor Barnes will not be held responsible for any inaccuracies, bugs, documented or undocumented, in the sample code below.

SHOULD YOU WISH TO USE THESE EXAMPLES FOR COURSEWORK, YOU ARE DOING SO AT YOUR OWN RISK.

Professor Barnes will not grant extra credit, time, debugging time, or anything else should you find a bug in the code; I may say, "Thanks for pointing that out!".

To use these examples you need to save them on your computer and open them in Alice. With Firefox you can right click and "save link as". With Internet Explorer you can right click and "save target as". Be sure to save in your default Alice worlds directory.

• Example of reference and object axes with translations and rotations. axesMove.a2w
• Using properties, variables, expression, watch, and print. distance.a2w
• Capture and set Poses -- simple animation poses.a2w
• Method based animation with "Do in order" and "Do together" sitDown.a2w
• Interpolation of "do together" using methods with different durations. Also example of method creation with parameter and variable (flyAround) interpolation.a2w
• Animating a camera tour with way points (dummy objects). wayPoints.a2w
• Writing a function to compute the bounding box of an object volumeFunction.a2w
• Alice's If/Else statements, random number expression twoRandomNumbers.a2w
• Using Alice's ArrayVisualization arrayVisualizationDemo.a2w
• Randomly selecting elements from an array arrayRandomElementDemo.a2w
• Using Alice's list collection listDemo.a2w
• Alice sortDemo.a2w insertion sort demo.
• Java version of an insertion sort algorithm InsertionSortDemo.java
• Move objects with arrow keys, test collision moveCollide.a2w

Resources

• Dick Baldwin's Behavior of Primitive Methods
• Tables of Alice 2.2
  • Primitive Fuctions and Methods
  • World functions
• W.P. Dann, S. Cooper, R. Pausch, Learning to Program with Alice second edition, Pearson Prentise Hall, 2008, pp 354.
  If you want to buy a "textbook" I recommend this one.
• Randy Pausch's last lecture inspirational talk from Alice's founder.