CS 202: Transition to Java

Spring 1999

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Administrative Notes:

• Course Meets:  MWF in Hollister 110, 12:20 - 1:10 PM, Until 2/18
• Instructor:  James Ezick, ezick@cs.cornell.edu, Upson 4139
• Graders:  Nicole Schlegel, ns48@cornell.edu and Brian Williams, bww3@cornell.edu 
• Office Hours:
  • James: Monday 1:10 - 2:00 PM, Wednesday 1:10 - 2:00 PM, Upson 4139
  • Nicole:  Wednesday 4:45 - 5:45, Upson 320
  • Brian: Thursday 1:00 - 2:00 PM, Upson 320

Prerequisites:

This course assumes that you have had previous experience in imperative programming and that you are at least familiar with the following:

• Basic command structures (loops, conditional, case statements, etc.)
• Variables, functions, static scope, call-by-value vs. call-by-reference.
• Notions of how computer memory works, addressing, arrays, locations vs. values in locations.
• Primitive data structures (stacks, lists, trees).
• How to compile, run, debug and test programs.

While it is possible to learn Java as a first language, the amount of work given in this class is calibrated to students who meet the above prerequisites.  Students who do not will find themselves requiring considerably more than one credit hour worth of work to succeed in this class.

Course Overview:

This class is intend to give students who already have experience in programming experience in the Java programming language.  Our goal is to cover the entire language.  This means that the course will be moving at an rapid pace.

Due to the fast pace at which we will be covering material I will not be able to cover everything in lecture.  You must seek out information on your own.  Be Resourceful!  The lectures are intended to present examples and insight into the language and to provide a forum for questions.  

This course is taught with the understanding the majority of students are taking it for the purpose of gaining the experience necessary to seek employment in jobs that require experience with Java.  The assignments and lectures are geared to bringing people up to a level where they can contribute to a professional software team.

Assignments and Grading:

This course is listed as one credit S/U.

There will be we weekly programming assignments that will consist of 1-4 problems in the language.  The goal of these exercises will be to give you experience in using the language constructs presented in class.  My intention is that if you have done the required reading and attended class then each problem should be doable in a single sitting (~ 60-90 minutes).  We reserve the right to ask you to demo an assignment if we have questions.

With regard to the assignments, you may talk about the assignments amongst yourselves (discuss techniques in the language, etc.) but you may not work in groups and you absolutely may not share code.  All of the code submitted must be your own.

An 'S' we be given to those students who do ALL of the assignments and who demonstrate sufficient proficiency in the language.

Development Environment:

The choice of development environment is left to the discretion of the student.  The code samples presented in class and made available on this site will have developed and tested using Sun's JDK 1.2.2.  It is my intention that this course stick to the core Java language and not make use of existing platform dependent libraries (Xlib, WFC, etc.).   Therefore any compiler which implements the language properly can be used.

This page was last edited: Tuesday, February 01, 2000 01:15:29 PM