Syllabus Highlights CSE 1310 – Introduction to Computers and Programming Vassilis Athitsos University of Texas at Arlington 1

About the Course This course is aimed to be the first course in computer programming. – This course is aimed for students who have NEVER PROGRAMMED BEFORE. The topic is difficult. – It requires very precise, mathematical thinking. Unlike other courses, "getting most of the material" will not get you a good grade. – If you have even small gaps in the material, it will be very hard to do well in the class. – For a program to work, it needs to be 100% correct. – Code that is 99% correct is 0% useful. 2

Time Expectations Expected: 10 hours per week outside of class. Weekly programming assignments, that will be time consuming. This is a class where: – Falling behind is easy. – Catching up is hard. Attention to detail will be crucial. – Code that is 99% correct is 0% useful. (yes, you will be hearing this a lot in this class). 3

Grading (1) A letter grade will be computed for your average homework score. A letter grade will be computed for your average exam score. The smallest of those two grades will be your semester grade. 4

Grading (2) So, if you ace the exams but do no homeworks, you will fail. If you ace the homeworks but fail the exams, you will fail. I fully expect some people will be shocked at the end of the semester, when they fail the class due to this policy. Still, there is nothing I can do about that. – The grading policy is on the syllabus. – You are responsible for reading and understanding the syllabus. – Complaining in December will be useless. 5

Grading (3) No homework scores will be dropped. No exam scores will be dropped. Grading is based on performance. Grading criteria do not include: – Effort. – Class participation. – What grade you need to qualify for financial aid, for a job, for graduation, etc. All requests for leniency in grading will be ignored. 6

Assignments You must submit on Blackboard. Late penalty: 4 points per hour. – No exceptions, except for medical/personal emergencies documented in writing. – Network/computer crashes will not be accepted as an excuse. Every semester, some people get 0 in an assignment (or more), because they submitted the wrong file on Blackboard. – Then they ask for leniency, because they did all the work, and just made a silly mistake in submitting. – Sorry, there will be no leniency on this issue. – Verify your submission every time. 7

Exams Most questions will ask you to write code. Some questions will ask you to read code and: – Predict what the code will do. – Fix mistakes. Exams are open book. – You can use books, notes, and any other handwritten or printed material. No electronic devices are allowed: – No calculators, cell phones, laptops, e-books. 8

Attendance Attending exams is mandatory. – Again, exceptions are made only for medical/personal emergencies documented in writing. – Transportation problems, malfunctioning alarms, not accepted as an excuse. You do not have to attend lectures. However, if you do not attend lectures, you are still responsible for understanding the material. – Do not expect a private lecture during office hours or by e- mail. 9

Class Participation Class participation is not part of the grading criteria. However: asking questions, and trying to answer questions, can help you in understanding the material. – If you have questions and you do not ask in class, where are you going to get the answers? If you do not understand something, always feel free to raise your hand and ask a question. 10

Course Website The course website is here: The course schedule, lecture slides, and code we write in class, will be available on the "Lectures" link. Assignments will be available on the "Assignments" link. The exam schedule and information about each exam will be available on the "Exams" link. 11

Syllabus The syllabus is posted here: You are responsible for reading and understanding what the syllabus says. I expect several students to complain at the end of the semester, when they receive poor grades, saying that they were not aware of the grading policy (or other aspects of the course). – My only response will be to point them to this slide. 12

Getting Help There are three teaching assistants for this course. Feel free to use their lab hours, which will be posted on the website. Feel free to send s with your questions. If you send us an , send it to ALL FOUR OF US (myself and the three TAs), to maximize chances of getting a reply fast. Do not expect responses to frantic queries in the last minutes before an assignment is due. – Little sympathy will be offered for people who leave assignments for the last minute. 13