Comp 212: Intermediate Programming Fall 2003

• 12/12/03: The results of Round 2 for the Othello Tournament are here. After a very close, tie-breaking "sudden death" match, annay edged past mwfriedm! Congratulations to Anna and Michael for such and intense and exciting finish! Great job to all participants!

• 12/10/03: The results of Round 1 for the Othello Tournament are here. Congratulations to mwfriedm, annay, bweidman and dhuss who advance to the final round!

• 12/06/03: Exam #3 is now available.

  • Do not read it until you are ready to take the exam.
  • You have 5 hours to complete the regular portion of the exam once you start, though an extra hour may be taken to complete the extra credit problems..
  • Go to previous semesters for links to old exams that you may want to study.
  • To extract files from a jar file, enter the command: jar -xfv jarFileName.
  • When you are ready to take the exam, click here to read the exam.
    
    
• Here is a sample strategy that is very smart (read: it won the tournament in the spring of '02!).
  • isairsPlayer.jar
  • Test your code against it! Directions:
    • create a directory called "isairs" in your default package directory
    • in the "isairs" directory, unjar the file. Many files should be created.
    • run the tournament code, and in the "add player" text field, type "isairs.TightStrategy" and hit enter
    • the new strategy should now appear on the drop lists
      
      
• Here is a sample strategy that is not too smart, but not entirely stupid either (read: your professors wrote it!).
  • comp212prof.zip
  • Test your code against it! Directions:
    • unzip the code into your default package directory. A package called comp212prof should be created.
    • run the tournament code, and in the "add player" text field, type "comp212prof.SBW_DXN_strategy<Enter>". The field should clear.
    • The new strategy should now appear on the drop lists.
      
      

• 12/04/03: Othello Tournament Rules are here!

• 12/04/03: Project 4 can be turned in before 11 AM on Wednesday, 12/10 without any penalty.

• 12/04/03: You can check your grades on the web now.

• 12/02/03: Please email Dr. Nguyen your choice of partners for Project 4. Please be sure to include your usernames. Note: Send an email even if you are working alone.

• 12/01/03: The final exam will be a take-home. It will be posted on the website on Saturday, 12/06/03 and is due on the last day of finals, Wednesday, 12/17/03 at 5pm.

• 11/19/03: Project 4 Milestone 1 is due now due Monday, 11/24/03 due to conflicts with projects in other classes.

• 11/17/03: Project 4 has been assigned. Milestone 1 is due Friday, 11/21/03. Milestone 2 ist due Friday, 12/05/03 (last day of classess).

• 10/10/03: If you need an extension on an assignment, please contact the instructors before the deadline has passed. Unauthorized late submissions will not be accepted!

• 09/20/03: When submitting UML, please do not just turn in the .SBS file that StructureBuilder uses. Labbies often have trouble opening this. Instead, once you've finished your UML, go to File->Export Diagram->To PNG File... and enter a file name. StructureBuilder will then make a .PNG file, which is a picture file and much easier for the labbies to handle. Include this new .PNG file in the directory that you turn in. Thank you.

• 09/10/03: You may work on Homework 1 in pairs. Please put both your names in the readme. In the future, the assignments will have to be completed individually unless explicitly stated otherwise!

• 08/25/03: The lab times will be:

  • M1: Monday 3:30 PM - 5:00 PM 
  • M2: Monday 7:00 PM - 8:30 PM

Should you miss the first day of class and not sign up for one of the above labs send me (dxnguyen at rice.edu) an e-mail to let me know your preferences so that I can assign you a lab.

 

Questions?
If you have questions about an assignment or the course in general, please post to the newsgroup (rice.owlnews.comp212) or send email to comp212 at rice.edu. This will allow all staff members to reply.

COMP 212 introduces students to object-oriented program design and the fundamental algorithms and data structures of imperative programming. All programming assignments are done in the Java programming language. Several programming projects of moderate size will help students to learn

• how to design object-oriented programs using design patterns;
• how to choose appropriate data structures and algorithms that strike a balance between logical simplicity and performance; and
• how to write programs in stream-oriented and event-oriented style.

The exercises will involve common data structures such as lists, stacks, queues, search trees, syntax trees, and hash tables, and will use algorithms for sorting, searching, and graph traversal. Some exercises will involve writing programs driven by a graphics user interface (GUI).

• Ken Arnold and James Gosling, The Java Programming Langauge (Third Edition), Addison-Wesley, 2000.
• Bruce Eckel, Thinking in Java (Second Edition), Prentice-Hall, 2000. [This text is easier to read than the one from the authors above. The author keeps a list of mirror sites where you can download the book for free online.]
• James Cooper, Java Design Patterns, A Tutorial AW 2000.
• Gamma, Helm, Johnson, Vlissides, Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software
• Mark Grand, Patterns in Java, John Wiley & Sons, 1998.
• David Geary, Graphic Java 2, Mastering the JFC 3rd edition, Sun Microsystems Press, 1999.

Resource Links:

Connecting to the Newsgroup:

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• Newsgroup = rice.owlnews.comp212
• Email = rice-owlnews-comp212 at rice.edu
• Direct link (works if server already set up): news://news.rice.edu/rice.owlnews.comp212
• Off campus access: Use SSH to tunnel NNTP port 119 to news.rice.edu. Use your favorite news reader with the server = localhost.

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Example: The address "foo at bar.com" would have to be changed to "foo@bar.com".

Thank you for your understanding.