Syllabus 

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• Course Name, Number and Prerequisite
• Contact Information
• Course Description
• Course Goals
• Required Course Materials
• Assignment Policies
• Grading.

For questions or comments please e-mail the instructor at blanca@hawaii.edu

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CONTACT INFORMATION

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 This course will introduce students to JAVA programming as well as to computer science in general. This course is intended for beginning programmers. It starts from the very basic concepts of object-oriented programming. If you have previously taken programming classes please be patient. 

Here are some  about this course:  

• What will you cover in this course?

You will learn:

* To write JAVA stand-alone applications.
* To program and post JAVA applets on the web.
* Arithmetic operations and precedence.
* To build and use classes.
* String manipulation
* Loop and control structures
* Arrays and vectors

You will also learn about general concepts of computer science.

• What won't be covered?

HTML basics won't be covered. If you are not familiar with HTML visit http://www.hawaii.edu/itsdocs/cen/php/. There you will find a crash course in HTML and instructions on how to build your first web page. You will have instructions and help on this area in your lab sessions with your TA. 

• Why is it worthwhile to study this subject? 

JAVA is the language of the Internet. The Internet keeps on growing and Java is becoming more important every day. As a programmer, if you are proficient with JAVA, you are more likely to find a good paying job. -$$$$-

• What is the approach to teaching this content?

We will learn all our material from a practical point of view. Some theory will be necessary, but the main idea will be to implement the concepts learned in a way that we can see how they apply to the real world. You will learn how the different areas of computer science converge to help us live better.

• How will this relate to the material that was covered in the prerequisite course(s)? 

After taking ICS101 (or equivalent) you should be familiar with UNIX, HTML and computer editors.

• Is there any other body of content that it will draw on? 

A good understanding of algebra and logic will be helpful in this course, even when it is not a prerequisite. In UH terms, if you have taken Math27, it will be helpful. If you have gone beyond that, it will be even better.

• What will be expected of you, the student? 
  • Aside from the class time the student will need to dedicate from 3 to 6 hours per week to this class. The reason for this, is that assignments will be given and due about every 8 to 10 days all throughout the course.
  • Lectures are very important. The material covered in the exam is based on lectures not in any of the books. Class participation is part of your grade, if you do not participate you will have no points given in that category.
  • You should attend the lab lectures. Important topics will be covered during these sessions. Lab activities also count towards your final grade.
• What about the labs?
  You should attend the labs. Important information will be given to you during the lab lectures. Lab activities will have to be turned in either during the lab or will be assigned as homework that you should turn in to ics111-lab@hawaii.edu. The TA.s office hours will take place during lab time, so you will always have direct access to him.

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COURSE GOALS

By the end of the Spring 2003 semester you will:

• Have basic knowledge of several computer science disciplines. 
• Be able to write JAVA applets and applications. 
• Be able to combine several JAVA classes into one programming project. 

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     OUR ICS111 BOOKS.

Required Book:    Foundations of Computer Science by Forouzan
Required Book:    Schaum Outline--Programming with Java
Optional Book:    Just enough UNIX

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• Important dates for ICS 111 Spring 2003.
• Homework assignments.
• Planned sequence of topics that will be covered in ICS111 this semester. Note that this is only a plan. I reserve the right to change it as needed.  The changes may or not be reflected in the web page. The main purpose of this sequence of topics is to give you an idea of what will be covered during the semester.

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 ASSIGNMENT POLICIES

How to submit your assignments:  

Your assignments should be submitted by e-mail to the following address:

ics111-homework@hawaii.edu

Your homework must be attached to the e-mail. If you are submitting a JAVA program, you MUST make sure that it compiles and runs properly in uhunix2. Failure to do so may result in point deduction. If your program runs in JBuilder, Visual Cafe or J++, that is no guarantee that it will run in uhunix2, so I you should upload and test your program before you turn it in. Programs will be graded using uhunix2.

Assignment due dates:  

Deadlines for each assignment will be given in day and time. As an example:  If your homework is due on Monday January the 10th of 2000 at 8:00 A.M. your program must have been received by that time in the above e-mail address. The time considered here is the uhunix2 time (not your personal computer's time, not the Greenwich time but uhunix2 time). Take into consideration that the time you send an e-mail and the time the e-mail is received may vary by seconds, perhaps minutes. The time taken into consideration here is the time at which we receive the e-mail. That will constitute our timestamp. Make sure that you allow enough time for the e-mail to be received before the deadline.

How will you know if we got your homework?  But most important, at what time did we get it?

For this you will do the following:
After sending your homework, you should use your browser to go to http://www2.hawaii.edu/~tp_200/bmf/ics111-homework.html so you can verify if your homework is there. I recommend you book mark it. PLEASE allow 5 minutes or so for the page to update itself. Use the "Refresh" button in your browser to update your page. 

What if you can't see your homework?

You may resend your homework. However the only homework that will be taken into consideration for grading will be the last one. So be careful because if you resend your homework a few minutes past the deadline because you didn't trust the web reload button the latest version is the one that will count and you will get points deducted for late work. So please take your time and try to send your homework at least one hour prior to the deadline.

How many points will a lose for late assignments?

Each homework is worth 100 points. Each day late will be 20 points deduction. After five days there is no point in turning in your homework  because you won't be awarded any points. Since it is "unfair" to take 20 points off if you are late 1 second I have the following policy for the first day: In the first 23 hours and 59 seconds after the deadline, you will lose 0.83 points every hour. So if you are one hour late late (or one minute late) your homework is still worth 99.17 points, and if you are 60.00001 minutes late your homework will be worth 98.34, etc....At 23.9999 hours past the deadline your assignment has a maximum value of 80 points.  Once you pass the first 24 hours your deduction will be 20 points per day, on other words: 24.000001 hours late is the same as 2 days late, and the assignment is worth 60% at this point. To figure out your maximum possible grade just do your math and count your time..

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Last modified on January 13th. 2002, 6:10 pm. HST
By Blanca J. Polo