Prerequisites:

CS 250 (Problem Solving and Programming) or equivalent

Students are presumed to be familiar with basic programming techniques, including the use of pointers, functions and procedures, loops and recursion. Also assumed is facility with basic algebra and logic.

Do I Need to Know C++?

Our Department teaches C++ in its beginning programming course (CS 150) and its problem solving course (CS 250). Consequently, most of the students in this class will have some background in C++. As a practical matter, this may influence the pacing of some topics during the lectures, but the textbook makes no assumption about the student's first programming language. With careful prior reading of the text, therefore, even students whose first programming language was not C++ should be able to follow and participate in the class with little difficulty.

Do I Need to Know Unix?

All students in the course will receive accounts on the CS Dept. network of Unix workstations, and knowledge of how to work with Unix is part of the course prerequisites (CS 250). Students who are unfamiliar with Unix must make it their own responsibility to learn how to use it. A tutorial is available via the course home page.

Assignments in this course will employ a wide variety of programming languages. All required languages will be available on the Dept.'s Unix system. Where possible, the course home page may indicate sources of language compilers and interpreters for other systems. In practice, however, small differences in compilers, hardware, and operating systems often make programs behave differently on different systems. In all cases, student programs will be graded based upon their performance on the CS Dept's Unix system, and, if a student develops his or her code using a different system, it is the student's responsibility to port their code to the CS Dept. Unix system and to test it there.