Bryn Mawr College
CS 110: Introduction to Computing
Fall 2010
Course Materials
Prof. Deepak Kumar

Information
Texts  Important Dates  Assignments  Lectures  Grading Links

General Information

Instructor: Deepak Kumar, 246 Park Hall, 526-7485
E-Mail: dkumar at cs dot brynmawr dot edu
WWW: http://cs.brynmawr.edu/~dkumar

Lecture Hours: Tuesdays & Thursdays , 2:30 p.m. to 4:00.m.
Room: Park 349
Lab: TBA in Room 231 (additional lab hours will also available, see below)

Laboratories:

Lab Assistants: The following Lab assitants will be available during the week (names and schedules will be posted by the end of this week) for assistance on lab assignments.

  1. Anna Benjamin (Mondays & Wednesdays 5:30p to 7:30p)
  2. Jenny Chen (Fridays 1p to 3p and Sundays 7p to 9p)
  3. Stephanie Tran (Fridays 11a to 1p and Sundays 6p to 8p)

These are the hours when the Lab will not be available:

TBA

Texts & Software

Learning Processing: A Beginner's Guide to Programming Images, Animation, and Interaction by Daniel Shiffman, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, 2008. Available at the Campus Bookstore.

Book Web Site: Here you will find additional materials.

Processing Software(This software is already installed in the Computer Science Lab). The software is also available for your own computer from Processing web site (www.processing.org).

 

Syllabus

Course Description: An introduction to the nature, subject matter and branches of computer science as an academic discipline, and the nature, development, coding, testing, documenting and analysis of the efficiency and limitations of algorithms. Also includes the social context of computing (risks, liabilities, intellectual property and infringement).

This semester, we will be exploring the creative aspects of coding as a context for learning the above concepts. You will exercise your creativity by desiging programs in a language called, Processing. Processing is a new language/environment built upon the programming language Java. Processing was created by artists, designers, and computer scientists to explore ideas of creative coding sing computer algorithms. The blurb below, from Shifman's text is an excellent description of what we will be doing this semester:

This book tells a story. It’s a story of liberation, of taking the first steps towards understanding the foundations of computing, writing your own code, and creating your own media without the bonds of existing software tools. This story is not reserved for computer scientists and engineers. This story is for you.

From: Learning Processing, by Daniel shiffman, page ix.

We will cover the entire text during this semester. Please refer to the text for more details.

 

Important Dates

August 31 : First lecture
October 7: Exam 1
December 9: Last lecture/Exam 2

Assignments

  1. Assignment#1: (Due on 7): Click here for details.
  2. Assignment#2 (Due on Thursday, September 16): Click here for details.
  3. Assignment#3 (Due on Thursday, September 23): Click here for details.
  4. Assignment#4 (Due on Tuesday, October 5): Click here for details.
    Assignment#4 client program (download here).
  5. Assignment#5 (Due on Thursday, October 28): Click here for details.
  6. Assignment#6 (Due on Tuesday, November 23): Click here for details.
  7. Assignment#7 (Due on Tuesday, November 23 & Tuesday December 7): Click here for details.

Lectures

Grading

All graded work will receive a grade, 4.0, 3.7, 3.3, 3.0, 2.7, 2.3, 2.0, 1.7, 1.3, 1.0, or 0.0. At the end of the semester, final grades will be calculated as a weighted average of all grades according to the following weights:

Exam 1: 20%
Exam 2: 25%
Labs & Written Work: 55%
Total: 100%

Links

Shiffman text web site

A database of color names

 

Created on August 15, 2010.