CS 1A Object-Oriented Programming in Java

jump down this page to: schedule | final grades | assignment grades | late policy | collaboration | style conventions

Instructor

Dave Harden
Email: harden.classes@gmail.com
Office Hours: Wednesday 1:15 - 2:15 here: Dave's Zoom Room
Office hours begin on January 13.
Response Times: I almost always respond to emails and discussion posts within 24 weekday hours, always within 48 weekday hours.

Please use the class discussions for all questions whenever possible. For private questions that are not appropriate for the class discussion, email me at harden.classes@gmail.com. Please don't use the Canvas messaging system (or "inbox"). Please include "CS 1A" in the subject when you email me.

Three Most Important Announcements!

• You must post an introduction in the "introductions" topic of the class forum by Monday, Jan 13, or I am required to drop you from the class. When you begin working your way through the modules, you'll see that this is the first task for week 1.

• Absolutely no assignments will be accepted for any reason after Wednesday, Mar 19.

• In the rare event that I grant an extension (due to prolonged illness, for example), it will always be via email. If you do not have an email from me stating clearly that I am giving you an extension, you do not have an extension. I do not give extensions verbally. Also, it is imperative that you read the Extensions Policy carefully!

Textbook

We're using an interactive etextbook published by zyBooks. The first time you click on a link in Canvas that leads to the zyBook, you will need to subscribe to the text for $89. (You can also purchase an access code in the bookstore, if you prefer.) I think you're going to find that this is a great way to learn computer programming!

Free Tutoring!!

The Online STEM Center offers free tutoring! More information at https://foothill.edu/stemcenter

Tentative Schedule

Assignments are due at 11:59pm on the date indicated in this schedule. Be sure to check the late policy for more information.

Module #	Topic	Lesson	Text Reading	Assignments	Suggested Start Date	Module Due Date
1	Introduction: Java	None	ch 1	Module 1 Reading	Monday, Jan 6	Monday, Jan 13
2	Variables/Assignments	2	ch 2	Module 2 Reading	Monday, Jan 13	Tuesday, Jan 21
3	Branches	3	ch 3	Module 3 Reading	Tuesday, Jan 21	Monday, Jan 27
4	Loops 1	4	ch 4.1 - 4.13	Module 4 Reading Project 1	Monday, Jan 27	Monday, Feb 3
5	Loops 2	5	ch 4.15 - 4.19	Module 5 Reading	Monday, Feb 3	Monday, Feb 10
6	Arrays	7.1 - 7.2	ch 6	Module 6 Reading	Monday, Feb 10	Tuesday, Feb 18
Midterm	Through Loops	1 - 5	ch. 1 - 4		Tuesday, Feb 18	Tuesday, Feb 18
7	User-Defined Methods 1	6	ch 5.1 - 5.17	Module 7 Reading	Tuesday, Feb 18	Monday, Feb 24
8	User-Defined Methods 2	7.3 - 7.6	ch 5.18 - 5.23	Module 8 Reading Project 2	Monday, Feb 24	Monday, Mar 3
9	Objects and Classes 1	8	ch 7.1 - 7.23	Module 9 Reading	Monday, Mar 3	Monday, Mar 10
10	Objects and Classes 2	8	ch 7.24 - 7.29	Module 10 Reading Project 3	Monday, Mar 10	Monday, Mar 17
Final		6 - 8, 15	ch 5 - 7		Monday, Mar 24	Monday, Mar 24

Final Grades

Your final score will be made up of the following components.

Component	points each	points total
Reading Assignments (10)	50	500
Discussions (10)	5	50
Projects (3)	100	300
Midterm	50	50
Final	100	100
total		1000

Grades will be assigned as follows: 900 points for an "A", 800 points for a "B", 700 points for a "C", 600 points for a "D". Grades of + and - are not given

Discussions (50 points)

You will be required to make one substantive post in a discussion each week. Each discussion is worth 5 points. To be confident that you'll get the 5 points, you should typically expect your post to be around 30 words or more. Posts with fewer words can, of course, be considered substantive, especially if it is a serious question about the content or a serious response to another student's question about the content.

Assignments (800 points)

Submissions that use concepts that have not been covered in class may receive a score of 0.

There are two kinds of assignments: Reading Assignments (500 points) and Projects (300 points).

Reading Assignments include participation activities, challenge activities, and LABs.

Reading Assignments are scored automatically in zyBooks. Note that it is very common for incorrect code to run fine on one compiler and then fail on another. Your code must run correctly on every compiler. Don't be surprised if your code works for you but doesn't pass all of the tests the first time you submit to the grading system.

I will review the LAB portions of your Reading Assignments in order to provide feedback, but I will not deduct points. These are for your practice. I strongly recommend that you practice the Style Conventions in all of your coding for this class.

Projects will be scored automatically in zyBooks and then checked manually to ensure that all requirements have been met and that the Style Conventions have been adhered to. They will be scored according to the percentages in the following table. Note that the number in the first column corresponds to the item number in the Style Conventions section, which appears later in this document.

1	Comments	20%
2	Appearance (e.g. Whitespace, Wraparound)	10%
3	Identifier Names	10%
4	Decomposition	20%
5	Indentation	10%
6	Simple Code/No Repeated Code	20%
7	Miscellaneous	10%

Exams (150 points)

There will be a midterm and a final. Both are taken online, and you can take each exam at any time of your choosing during the day on which it is scheduled (see the schedule). The exams are multiple choice. Once you start, they must be completed within 60 minutes, without exception, so ensure that you will not be interrupted once you begin. The coverage for each exam is stated in the schedule.

You will take the exams on the honor code. The tests are available for one full day for your convenience, but the validity of the tests relies heavily on your academic integrity. Don't take advantage of the flexibility by sharing questions with students who have not taken the test.

You are expected to simulate a class environment when you take the exams. The exams are open book and open notes, and you may even use your compiler, but you cannot receive any help from another person. The rules are summarized below. Email me if you have any questions:

• Allowed: Textbook
• Allowed: Notes
• Allowed: Past assignments
• Allowed: Compiling your answers
• Not Allowed: Browsing non-class websites
• Not Allowed: Accepting assistance from another person.
• Not Allowed: Sharing questions with other students after the test.

Late Policy

This late policy is for assignments and discussions only. Late exams are not accepted.

Assignments are due at 11:59pm on the date indicated in the schedule. However, assignments may be submitted up to one week late with no penalty. This is is the "final deadline". This does not mean that the due date is extended! For example, if your assignment is not done by the original due date, and you get severely ill between the due date and the final deadline, so that you cannot complete your assignment by the final deadline, it will be considered late. In addition, failing to complete projects by the original due date will put you behind in the class, and may delay the grading of your assignment significantly. You should make every effort to complete the assignment by the original due date.

For technical reasons, the due dates shown in zyBooks are the final deadlines rather than the due dates.

Beyond the final deadline, assignments will be accepted until 2 weeks after the original due date (except that no assignments will be accepted after Wednesday, Mar 19). They will be considered late and will receive a 50% deduction, with no exceptions. Assignments are not accepted more than 2 weeks late.

In order to get credit for an assignment that is submitted after the "final deadline" you must submit it in zyBooks and then email me to let me know.

Note that nothing in this Late Policy is intended to imply that you may resubmit an assignment once it has been graded.

To repeat: absolutely no assignments will be accepted for any reason after Wednesday, Mar 19.

About Extensions

The late policy in this class is already extremely generous.

Under extreme circumstances (e.g., extended serious illness) I may grant an extension as an exception to the above late policy. In this case, you must proactively request the specific extension and receive notice of the extension in an email. Otherwise it is not valid. Requests for extensions will not be granted if you wait more than a couple of weeks after the due date.

Due to the already generous late policy, extensions will not be granted for problems such as brief illnesses, family or personal issues, or emotional distress that is not accompanied by a doctor's note. If these problems cause you to lose too many points, you should consider withdrawing from the class.

Academic Dishonesty

All work that you submit must be your own work.

You are free to work together with and get help from your classmates. This should be limited to discussing the assignment. It should not, for example, require you to view each others' code (with one exception noted below). You are free to research topics online (although I don't advise this), provided that the work you submit is completely your own. In this class, these guidelines will be enforced as follows:

1. Any such collaboration must be cited near the top of the documentation for your submitted code.
2. Any such collaboration must not result in code that is so similar to another student's code or to code found online that I am able to detect the collaboration.

I understand that point #2 may be hard for you to determine. Therefore, (1) If you are not sure whether your collaboration crosses this line, PLEASE CHECK WITH ME. Also, (2) you will receive one warning. There will be no consequence for a first violation of this policy, provided you have cited the collaboration.

I suggest that in order to avoid any questions, you get all of the information you need for the course from the text and lessons. If you need help, ask in the discussion, email me, or get help from official tutors from the college.

Further guidelines for using online help:

You should not use even one line of code that you find online, even if you modify it. You may use websites for reference purposes (for example: how does a particular language feature work?). But you should not get information specifically related to a problem you are trying to solve (for example: what's an algorithm for reducing a fraction?). In particular, Don't ask for help from online forums. They will almost invariably do the problem for you, or give you bad information.

Examples of specific actions that violate this policy:

• Using chegg.com or coursehero.com or essaytaste.com or any AI for any reason
• Using an online tutor
• Looking at another student's code
• Showing another student your code
• Viewing or copying code online that is related to a course assignment

Exceptions:

• You can look at another student's code onlyif it is in order to help that student. You must be confident that you won't use any of the other student's code in your own work.
• You can show another student your code only if you need help from that student. You must be confident that that student will not use any of your code in their work.

Consequences

• A first violation of this policy (with no citation, as described above) will result in a zero on the assignment and the submission of an Academic Dishonesty Report.

• If you have received a warning, then a subsequent violation of this policy will result in a zero on the assignment and the submission of an Academic Dishonesty Report, even if there is a citation.

• A subsequent violation following a violation that resulted in a zero on an assignment will result in an "F" in the class.

Official Course Outline and Student Learning Outcomes

You can access the official course outline of record for all CS courses at http://www.foothill.edu/schedule/catalog.php. From that page, select "Course Outlines of Record" from the left navigation area.

Here is a link to student learning outcomes for this and other CS courses.

Style Conventions

In the real world, programmers usually work in teams and often the company that they work for has very precise rules for what kind of style to use when writing programs. For this reason, and also to encourage good programming style, we will be adopting the following style conventions for this class. This is not to say that these rules represent the only good style for writing computer programs (although in most cases they do). After you finish this class, you may decide that you prefer a different style than what is required here. However, in order to get the best grades on your programming assignments in this class, you must follow these guidelines.

Each style convention is labeled with a code in square brackets. This code refers to the first module in which you are required to follow this style convention. For example, if the style convention is labeled with [m3], that means you don't have to worry about following this convention until module 3. If the word "special" appears in the square brackets, it means that only those students who might use a Java feature not covered in this class need be concerned.

1. Documentation:

   A. Initial File Comment [m2]: Your programs should be well-documented. Each program should begin with an initial file comment. This comment should start by indicating your name, class, date, instructor, name of file, etc. Next it should describe in detail what the program does and how the code works. Any input expected from the user and any output produced by the program should be described in detail. You should expect your initial file comment for the first few assignments to be at least 50 words, and by assignment 7 you should be seeing over 90 words.

   Important local variables should be commented at their declaration. Aside from this, in most cases it should not be necessary to place comments in the body of a method. This usually clutters up your code and ends up making the method more difficult to read. If you find yourself needing to explain something in the middle of a method, perhaps you should look for a clearer way to write it!

   B. General Advice [m2]: Your comments should be directed toward a reader who is an expert Java programmer. You should not explain features of the language!

   C. Method Comments [m7]: Just above each of your method definitions you must provide a comment describing what the method does. A simple method might have a 15 word comment, while a more complex method should have a comment of at least 50 words. Make sure to explain the role of each parameter in your method comments, and refer to them by name.

2. Appearance:

   A. General [m1]: Use lots of whitespace (blank lines and spaces) to separate the different parts of your program!! When I look at your program my first impression should not be a page crammed with code. Get rid of wraparound. Put a blank line between your declarations and your statements. Put a space before and after each operator. Make sure your lines aren't too long, no more than 80 or 90 characters.

   B. With Methods [m7]: Put 6 blank lines between method definitions.

3. Identifier Names:

   A. General [m1]: Choose your identifier names very carefully. Variable names should precisely represent what the variable is storing. Do not use abbreviations unless you feel the identifier name would otherwise be so long that it would hinder the readability of your program. Don’t use one letter variable names except, perhaps, as a counter in a for loop.

   B. With Methods [m7]: Choose your method names so that as much as possible your program reads like English and the names describe precisely what the method does. Void method names should start with an action word (readString, getData, etc.).

4. Decomposition [m7]:

   Any time there is a sequence of statements in your program that performs a specific, nameable sub-task, you should consider making that sequence of statements into a method. A nice length for methods is about 10 lines, although they can be longer if they are simple (for example, lots of output statements) or if there is just no logical way to break it up. Consider making complex methods (for example, nested loops) even shorter. A goal: when you are done with your program, I ought to be able to look at any particular method and have a general understanding of what is does and how just at a glance.

   In this class you should rarely write a method longer than 10 lines.

5. Indentation [m1]:

   Indents must be exactly 4 spaces.

   You may follow the indentation scheme used in the textbook or you may use the scheme used in the lessons. No others. For example, every statement must appear on a line by itself, every close curly brace must appear as the first (or only) item on a line, and every open curly brace must appear as the last (or only) item on a line.

6. Simple Code/No Repeated Code [m1]:

   Make sure that your code is as simple as possible and that there is no unnecessary repeated code.

7. Miscellaneous:

   1. [m2] In most cases no numbers other than 1 or 0 should appear in your program. Other numbers should usually be declared as class constants using the "final" keyword. Names of constants should be all uppercase.

   2. [m2]Do not use any class variables in your main class. These are variables that are declared in the main class but outside of any method definition. The exception to this rule is the Scanner variable. Violating this guideline may cost you a lot of points. (Note that this does not apply to final variables.)

   3. [m4] Do not use break (except in a switch statement), return (except in a value-returning function), exit, or continue.

   4. [m4] Don't mix up statements and expressions. For example, count++ should be used as a statement, not as an expression.

   5. [m1] The characters "== true" or "== false" should never occur in your code.

   6. [m7] You should never have

      if (x) {
          return true;
      } else {
          return false;
      }
      

      or

      if (x) {
          return true;
      } 
      return false;
      

      in your code (where x is any expression). These can be replaced with simply

      return x;
      

   7. [m2] Do not use a floating point variable to store a quantity that will always be an integer.