Syllabus

Lecturers

Lecturer: Mr. James Kukla
Office: ECS 216
Office Hours: MW 4-5pm or by appointment
Telephone: 410-455-3967
E-mail: kukla@umbc.edu

Lecturer: Ms. Susan Mitchell
Office: ECS 225 L
Office Hours: M 2-3pm, T&Th 1-2pm, or by appointment
Telephone: 410-455-3099
E-mail: smitchel@cs.umbc.edu

Lecture Times and Places

Lecture: TuTh.......2:30pm- 3:45pm (LH5 ...) MITCHELL, S 0101 M.........10:00am-10:50am (CP 208) DIS 0102 W.........10:00am-10:50am (CP 208) DIS 0103 F.........10:00am-10:50am (CP 208) DIS 0104 W.........10:00am-10:50am (SS 209) DIS Lecture: MW.........5:30pm- 6:45pm (LH5 ...) KUKLA, J 0201 M..........7:00pm- 7:50pm (CP 208) DIS 0202 W..........7:00pm- 7:50pm (CP 208) DIS 0203 M..........7:00pm- 7:50pm (SS 409) DIS 0204 W..........7:00pm- 7:50pm (SS 409) DIS

Textbook

C++ with Object-Oriented Programming by Paul S. Wang PWS Publishing Company

Course Description

This course continues the development of programming and problem-solving skills, focusing on recursion, pointers, data abstraction, and procedural abstraction. Topics include: introduction to asymptotic notation; data structures including lists, stacks, queues, hash tables and elementary binary search trees; sorting and searching; and an introduction to the C++ language and to object-oriented programming. Programming projects for this course will use the C and C++ programming languages. This is the second course for students interested in pursuing further study in computer science. Prerequisites: CMSC 201 and MATH 151.

CMSC Gateway

For students who enrolled in college for the first time in Summer 1998 or later, you have two choices: pass both of CMSC 201 and CMSC 202 with a grade of B or better or don't graduate as a CMSC major. The registrar has very specific rules about repeating courses in sequence and if you were to have a C in 201 and then take and pass 202 expecting to retake 201, you can't. Since the classes form a sequence, you cannot retake an earlier class in the sequence once you've passed a later one.

Objectives

The objectives of this course are:

To learn programming in C++ and object-oriented programming.
To master some basic data structures, including: linked lists, stacks, queues and binary search trees.
To understand the fundamental programming concepts of abstract data types, recursion, memory allocation and functional parameters.
To gain familiarity with basic algorithms for searching and sorting, including: hashing, binary search, Merge Sort and Quicksort.

Grading

There will be five projects worth a total of 45%. The breakdown for the project portion of the grade is as follows: Project 0 0% Project 1 5% Project 2 5% Project 3 10% Project 4 10% Project 5 15% There will be two midterms (15% each) and a final exam (25%). Make-ups for exams are given under only the most dire circumstances (almost never).

Grades will be on the standard curve:

0 <= F < 60 60 <= D < 70 70 <= C < 80 80 <= B < 90 90 <= A <= 100 Your grade is based on timely work accomplished during the semester; incomplete grades will only be given for medical illness or other such dire circumstances.

After each grade is returned, there is a grace period of one (1) week during which you may come speak to me about any problems you have with your grade. After that time, your grade stays where it is.

Projects

The critical programming skills cannot be learned simply by attending the lectures. You should budget enough time to work on the projects as well. Projects are due by midnight of the due date. If you fail to turn in a project on time, a late penalty will be assessed (even if it's only a few seconds late -- no excuses, no exceptions). Projects will be graded according to four equal parts: correctness, design, style, and documentation.

For details and an Important Warning , see Project Submission and Grading Policy.

Lectures and Readings

You are expected to attend all lectures and your weekly discussion session. You are responsible for all material covered in the lecture, even if they are not in the textbook. You are responsible for the material in the readings, even if they are not covered during lecture. There will be some number of unannounced quizzes which may be given in either the lecture or the discussion, so you should keep up with the assigned readings during the semester.

Exams

In general, any exams and quizzes will be closed-book and closed-notes. The final exam will be comprehensive and cover the material from the entire course.

Email Etiquette:

Email is great -- much better than voice mail. If you need to contact your instructor about this class outside of lecture and office hours, email is much better than the telephone. You should, however, observe the following etiquette:

Do not include your programs unless requested. Email is good for lots of things, but it is horrible for debugging. You should use my office hours, the TAs' office hours or the Help Center for debugging help.
Use your real name. I get a lot of junk email (spam). Email from "Hot Stuff" gets deleted without being read.
Include a meaningful subject line, something like "CMSC 202 Project 2 question."
If you ask a good question by email, I will send your question and the reply to the entire class as well. If you do not want your question repeated to the entire class, please state so clearly in your message.
Know the difference between "reply" and "reply to all".
Know how to include a plain text file in an email message without sending it as an attachment. Attachments are really annoying. It is rare that a plain text file needs to be sent as an attachment.
You should also know that email is not secure. It is quite easy for someone to send mail to you pretending to be someone else. When I send important email messages (e.g. class cancellation notices, project extensions, grade reports), I will sign the message using a digital signature. You can then use the pgp utility to check that the message indeed came from me, rather than someone pretending to be me. Instructions on how to use pgp is available on the course web page.

Wednesday, 26-Jan-2000 16:17:58 EST