Assignment A0. Assert statement
It is for you to do as soon as you get Eclipse working and you have been to recitation 01. Purpose of A0: Get you to use Eclipse and learn about the Java assert statement.
For those of you who are interested, we also have ppt slides with notes (as a pdf) written by Sir Tony Hoare on using assert statements --in many programming languages. Tony is one of the significant people in CS, and if you continue with CS courses, you wiill see his name often and read some of his papers dealing with languages, concurrency, and programming. He is Professor Emeritus at Oxford and a Principal Researcher for Microsoft. He is the author of Quicksort (which you will see later in 2110) and the creator of Hoare Logic for verifying program correctness.
Here, he gives practical hints on using assert statements. Read especially the notes on pages 14-15 about preconditions and postconditions.
A0 handout Assert early and assert often (ppt)
Assignment A1. Classes
The purpose of A1 is to give you practice with developing a class --in this case, one that maintains information about the PhD advisors of a person with a PhD. Along the way, you will practice (1) writing a JUnit testing class, (2) writing assertions for preconditions, (3) writing good method specifications and class invariants and using good conventions in presenting programs, and (4) writing and checking javadoc specifications.
File a1.pdf is the handout for the assignment. The CMS tells you when A1 is due. Get started early. a1.pdf griesGenealogy.pdf chaudhuriGenealogy.pdf
Assignment A2. Functions
The purpose of A2 is to give you practice writing java functions, mainly dealing with Strings. We found out in earlier semesters of this course that many students did not practice unless forced to, so we have to give this assignment. The handout is quite short. File A2.java contains lots of instructions as well as the specificaitons and stubs for the functions you have to write. a2handout.pdf A2.java
Assignment A3. Linked lists
Assignment A3 introduces you to "linked lists", a data structure that allows lists to grow to any size and in which operations like insertion and removal of a value can take place in constant time. You will implement a doubly linked list. a3handout.pdf LinkedList.java
Assignment A4. Collision detection
Assignment A4 is to implement collision detection among shapes.
Assignment A5.
Assignment A5 is to implement a treemap view of a filesystem.
Assignment A6.
Assignment A6 requires you to implement a min-heap.
Assignment A7.
Assignment A7 requires you to implement Dijkstra's shortest path algorithm.
Assignment A8.
ShippingGame: implement a program to move parcels on trucks efficiently. It makes use of threads.
Automated Cheating Detection
We have noticed that some Cornell classes do a so-so job of enforcing the academic integrity policy. In CS2110, we have a solution: we use an automated system that uses sophisticated artificial intelligence techniques combined with program analysis tools to notice unusual similarities between programs turned in by different people. These tools really work and are quite hard to fool. So, while it might seem tempting to borrow a solution from a buddy, change the variable names and comments, or reorder the statements, the tools would be very likely to figure out what you did.
The tool we use, called Moss, was developed by a Cornell PhD, now a professor at Standford, over 10 years ago.
We take cheating seriously, and cheating with an attempt to cover it up is grounds for failing the course outright. Realistically, it is much easier to just do the assigned problems than to get away with handing in code someone else wrote, because short of rewriting that code completely from scratch, we’ll catch it.
So you’ve been warned: It is difficult to get away with cheating in CS2110. Please do your own work, and talk to an instructor, a TA, or a consultant, as often as needed if you get stuck and need help. We’ll get you back on track.