CS212 Overview
CS212 Overview
CS212 is an introductory course covering a broad range of computer science concepts and techniques, including data abstraction, recursion, program correctness, generic functions, object oriented programming, pattern matching, and languages and their evaluators. We use the Scheme programming language language, a dynamic functional language augmented with object oriented facilities, which is well suited for covering a broad range of introductory computer science topics. This is not a course about the Scheme language! It just happens to be the "notation" that we have chosen for writing programs. The major goals of the course are to teach students how to think clearly about programs and programming and to provide a toolbox of modern programming techniques that will be applicable in any language.
Q: What's the difference between CS212 and CS211?
A: Students often wonder whether to take CS211 or CS212. CS211 focuses on programming skills and is taught using the object-oriented language Java. CS212 is more of an introduction to computer science. It provides exposure to a broad range of computational and programming problems using a number of programming paradigms, including functional, object-oriented and imperative programming techniques. If you have a good CS background and/or good formal skills (e.g., you are good at math or physics) you should probably take CS212. Transfers between CS211 and CS212 in either direction are encouraged during the first two weeks.
The best way to reach the course staff is by posting questions or comments to the CS212 newsgroup cornell.class.cs212. We will try to respond to questions within one working day.
You can also reach the course staff by sending email to cs212@cs.cornell.edu.
Lectures are Tuesday and Thursday at 10:10 in Olin 155. Recitations are Monday and Wednesday, 2:30-3:20 (Sec1 - Upson 205); 3:35-4:25 (Sec2 - Upson 111A). Recitations expand on the material in lecture and provide more opportunity to ask questions.
Consulting hours are held in Upson 320, SuMTW 7-10pm. The night before every project is due, we will hold extended consulting hours from 7pm to 12 midnight. Consulting hours will not be held the day the problem sets are due or the day after.
There is no textbook for this course. There will be course handouts and lecture notes, which will be available on the course web site. If you are interested in acquiring books on Scheme, there is a partial list of both introductory and advanced texts below. Those books that are available have been put on reserve in Carpenter.
The Scheme developement environment that we are using is called DrScheme. See the course software page for more information and documentation about the Scheme language and the DrScheme environment.
Students are responsible for all material in the assigned readings, as well as material covered in lectures and in recitations. There will be five to six problem sets, two preliminary exams, and a final exam. In addition, we will periodically have short homeworks and in-class quizzes. The short homeworks and quizzes will be graded on a strictly pass/fail basis and are intended to give you quick feedback and lots of practice. Each problem set will include written exercises and a programming assignment. Course grades will be based on a combination of the short homeworks, quizzes, problem sets and exam scores. The problem sets will account for approximately one third of the total grade. No late assignments will be accepted, but we will generally grade assignments immediately and return them within one or two class periods.
You should try to complete the programming assignments early, as we will not accept late work. The best use of your time and the machine's time is to think about the problems before typing anything at the computer. (No matter how many times we say this, it takes a long time to sink in: think before typing.)
Assignments are submitted using e-mail, as described here. No late assignments will be accepted, and there will be no extensions.
Short answer: You can pair up for the (long) problem sets but not the short homeworks.
Much of the learning in this course comes from doing the programming problems. You may (and in fact we encourage you to) work jointly with one other person on the problem sets. No more than two people should work together. If you work with someone else, you must submit a single joint assignment with both names on it. Under no circumstances may you hand in work done with (or by) someone else under your own name. If in doubt, credit the person(s) from whom you got help. Your code should never be shared with anyone other than your partner. You would be amazed at how easy it is to tell when people work together on problem sets, so please don't make life unpleasant for all of us by breaking these rules. The penalties for cheating at Cornell are severe, and include expulsion; see the CS Department's Code of Academic Integrity. If you are unsure about anything, please ask.
CIT and various colleges on campus provide public Macintosh and PC facilities. Though DrScheme runs on Macintosh's, the ones provided by CIT appear to be too slow. Therefore, we have only installed DrScheme on the Windows machines. You may use your own machine or the public ones. If you are interested in installing DrScheme on your own machine, then see the course software page for details. The CS department does not provide computer facilities for this course.
Tuesday, February 9: Problem set 1
Friday, February 19: Problem set 2
Friday, March 5: Problem set 3
Tuesday, March 30: Problem set 4
Monday, April 19 Problem set 5
Thursday, May 6: Problem set 6
If you have a conflict and will need to take a make-up exam, please notify Professor Morrisett as soon as possible.
| Date | Time | Location | |
| Prelim 1 | Thursday, March 11, 1999 | 7:30-9:00pm | Kimball B11 |
| Review | Wednesday, March 10, 1999 | 9-11pm | Philips 219 |
| Prelim 2 | Tuesday, April 27, 1999 | 7:30-9:00pm | Kimball B11 |
| Review | Monday, April 26, 1999 | 7-10pm | Upson 205 |
| Final | Friday, May 14, 1999 | 9:00-11:30am | Hollister B14 |
| Review | Sunday, May 13, 1999 | 6:30-8:30pm | Upson 205 |
[1/26] The Study of Computation, and an Introduction to Scheme
[1/28] Function Abstraction and the Substitution Model of Evaluation
[2/2] Procedures and Processes: Iteration, Recursion and Induction
[2/4] Higher Order Procedures: Functional Arguments and Values
[2/9] Analysis of Algorithms: Orders of Growth
[2/11] Data Abstraction: Structures, Contracts and Implementations
[2/16] Hierarchical Data: Lists, Trees and the need for Quotation
[2/18] Recursive List Processing and Reasoning about Lists
[2/23] Symbolic Differentiation: An Extended Example
[2/25] Generic Operations
[3/2] Generic Operations: Polynomial Arithmetic System
[3/4] Assignment and the Environment Model of Evaluation
[3/9] Assignment and Local State Variables
[3/11] Objects with State and Object Oriented Programming
[3/16] Object Oriented Programming and Inheritance
[3/18] More About Object Oriented Programming
[3/30] Mutable Data: Stacks and Queues
[4/1] Mutable Data: Heaps, Heapsort and Priority Queues
[4/6] The Metacircular Evaluator: Scheme in Scheme
[4/8] Compilation
[4/13] Optimization
[4/15] Variations on Expression Evaluation
[4/20] Streams
[4/22] Infinite Streams
[4/27] Garbage Collection and the Illusion of Infinite Memory
[4/29] Topics in CS: Randomization and QuickSort
[5/4] Topics in CS: Computability
[5/6] Topics in CS: Mystery Topic
Last update: 01/19/00 11:35 PM