UMBC CMSC202, Computer Science II, Fall 1998, Sections 0101, 0102, 0103, 0104

Course Description

Textbook:

Prerequisites:

Objectives:

• 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:

Your final letter grade is based on the standard formula:

0 <= F < 60, 60 <= D < 70, 70 <= C < 80, 80 <= B < 90, 90 <= A <= 100

Attendance and Readings:

You are expected to attend all lectures. You are responsible for all material covered in the lecture, even if they are not in the textbook. You should keep up with the assigned readings during the semester. Some reading material will distributed through the course web page. You are responsible for the material in the readings, even if they are not covered during lecture.

You are also expected to attend the discussion sections. New material will be covered during discussion for which you are responsible. For example, help with the projects, review for exams and instruction on the use of the UNIX system will take place during discussion rather than lecture.

Your attendance in lecture and discussion is worth 4 percent of your grade. On days where attendance at lecture or discussion is low, attendance will be taken by a roll call. If attendance is uniformly high throughout the semester, then attendance will never be taken and every student will receive the full credit for attendance. Otherwise, each student will receive credit for attendance that is proportional to the number of times he or she is present for a roll call.

Email Etiquette:

• Do not include your programs unless I request it. 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."
• Send email to the email address, chang@gl.umbc.edu, rather than a slew of other email addresses that I have.
• 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.