Fundamentals I
Welcome to Fundamentals I at Northeastern University, College of Computer Science.
This course is an introduction to computing and programming. Its major goal is to introduce students to the principles of systematic problem solving through programming and the basic rules of computation.
The course does not assume any prior programming
experience. It is therefore suitable for all freshman students—
Blog
Tue Oct 21 22:47:00 EDT 2014
Here is code from Prof. Ahmed’s 10/16 lecture and her 10/20 lecture.
Tue Oct 21 21:20:00 EDT 2014
Many of you are Mac users, and many of you Mac users have heard the news and jumped on the new OS, 10.10 Yosemite. In addition to the pretty new flat UI, and iOS interrogations you may have found one of the best new features of the OS is the crash you experience when trying to load DrRacket.
To solve this problem follow the steps listed below.
1. (Optional) Remove your copy of Racket, by dragging the whole folder into the Trash.
2. Download and Install a nightly build from Northwestern University.
3. Possibly reinstall the course plugin.
For those of you interested, here is the bug causing the problem.
Sun Oct 19 22:09:19 EDT 2014
The new homework assignments are up. Note that we are back to Thursday due dates.
Thu Oct 16 10:43:43 EDT 2014
Missing your phone? If you left your phone in Prof. Shivers’ lecture this morning, send him email.
Or you could call... oh. Better send email.
Wed Oct 15 23:28:30 EDT 2014
Exam time and location
The exam will be held 6:00-9:00 PM, at the following locations:
10 BK: Prof. Ahmed’s section
200 RI: Profs. Shivers and Lerner’s sections
108 SN: Prof. Razzaq’s section
Tue Oct 14 15:03:09 EDT 2014
Homework correction: the initial release of homework 6 provides a language level of "ISL" (that is, "Intermediate Student Level"). That was an error.
There’s no harm in using ISL, but we had actually intended "BSL" ("Beginning Student Language"). We’ve fixed the homework assignment itself. You can successfully write the assignment using the Beginning Student Language. (However, if you used features from ISL, due to our error, it will absolutely not count against you.)
Mon Oct 13 17:57:06 EDT 2014
Review sessions!
There are no labs this Tuesday (10/14). However... your friendly Fundies 1
tutors and TAs will be on hand to hold review sessions at the lab times.
Attendance is optional —
Mon Oct 13 14:24:13 EDT 2014
The exam1 review session for HONORS students will be held Tuesday, Oct 14, 8pm to 10pm in Shillman 135.
Fri Oct 10 10:56:10 EDT 2014
Here is code from Prof. Ahmed’s 10/9 lecture.
Fri Oct 10 18:30:31 EDT 2014
Homework 6 is up. Have fun! (No, really.)
Thu Oct 9 19:24:42 EDT 2014
Here are the versions of the snake game from Prof. Lerner’s Monday, Wednesday, and today’s lectures.
Tue Oct 7 00:16:05 EDT 2014
New homework partner pairings were sent out last Friday, Oct 3rd, by TAs. You are expected to work on PS5 and the subsequent problem sets with your new partner. If you did not receive a partner pairing email (check your spam folder), please contact the head TA of your lab.
Tue Oct 7 00:10:39 EDT 2014
Here is a sample exam for you to practice with.
For students in the honors section, here is a sample exam1 honors supplement.
Tue Oct 7 00:10:39 EDT 2014
Here is code from Prof. Ahmed’s 10/6 lecture.
Tue Oct 7 00:07:40 EDT 2014
Sadruddin Saleem will be holding his office hours from 3-5pm today (Tuesday) instead of 5-7pm.
Mon Oct 6 19:26:02 EDT 2014
Homework 5 has a small bug: we said "The sum of a box’s height, weight and length must be 62 inches or less," when we meant to say "The sum of a box’s height, width and length must be 62 inches or less." The assignment has been fixed.
Fri Oct 3 18:54:27 EDT 2014
Homework 5 is up.
Fri Oct 3 11:50:13 EDT 2014
Here is code from Prof. Ahmed’s 10/2 lecture.
Thu Oct 2 13:24:11 EDT 2014
The code from Prof. Shivers’ class this morning (with the data definitions for the snake game) is available.
Wed Oct 1 21:28:22 EDT 2014
Please note: Exam 1 will be held at 6:00 pm - 9:00 pm on Thursday 10/16, at 10 BK, 200 RI and 108 SN.
Wed Oct 1 18:43:01 EDT 2014
Some students have had some questions regarding the relevance of the Design Recipe to the grading of homework 2. We did not require strict adherence to the Design Recipe, but we did require you to code to the standards we were showing in class. In practice, this meant that we required unit tests, purpose statements and so forth, but we didn’t require templates.
Tue Sep 30 22:36:13 EDT 2014
Here is code from Prof. Ahmed’s 9/29 lecture.
Tue Sep 30 13:48:44 EDT 2014
Sadruddin Saleem will be holding his office hours from 3-5pm today instead of 5-7pm.
Sun Sep 28 23:48:44 EDT 2014
Homework 4 is up.
Mon Sep 22 14:48:48 EDT 2014
Here is code from Prof. Ahmed’s 9/25 HONORS lecture.
Here is code from Prof. Ahmed’s lecture in Prof. Lerner’s section.
Thu Sep 25 12:15:10 EDT 2014
;;; Here's a box with three compartments: |
;;; +----------------------+ |
;;; | Top/left | Top/right | |
;;; +----------------------+ |
;;; | Bottom | |
;;; +----------------------+ |
Tue Sep 23 12:25:10 EDT 2014
This week, office hours held by Elin Carstensdottir on Tuesday (today) from 2pm to 4pm will be moved to Wednesday 5pm to 7pm. Her normal Tuesday office hours will resume next week.
Mon Sep 22 14:48:48 EDT 2014
Here is code from Prof. Ahmed’s 9/22 lecture.
Thu Sep 18 22:24:42 EDT 2014
Here is code from Prof. Ahmed’s 9/18 lecture.
Thu Sep 18 11:17:18 EDT 2014
Homework two asks you to use the Design Recipe. As we’ve only introduced the design recipe this Wednesday, we are going to relax that. So you do not need to show templates. However, we still expect good, well-designed code – a poorly-designed program that works perfectly is not going to get full credit. (Such code in the real world would get you either fired, or – how to put this diplomatically? – shifted over to the Q/A team.)
So we will expect your submissions to be clear, well indented. We would expect you to include tests, since we’ve been doing that in lecture for weeks.
If you do show templates, that will only help you – for example, if you make a mistake on your final code, but you show a correct template, that would get you some partial credit.
Going forward, e.g., on homework 3 and after, we will expect you to follow the design recipe.
Wed Sep 17 11:21:42 EDT 2014
Prof. Shivers’ office hours have moved to Monday 10:30 am.
Wed Sep 17 11:21:42 EDT 2014
Homework 2, problem 1 named the input to the favorite-star function l. That’s an "ell," the letter occurring after "k" and before "m" in the alphabet, not a one, the digit occurring after zero and before two. But it looks a lot like a one, in a sans serif font on your web browser, so it’s easy to get confused.
We’ve changed the name from "l" to "sq-len" to make it less confusing.
Mon Sep 15 19:13:25 EDT 2014
The links to the second edition of How to Design Programs (also known as "2e HTDP") were pointing to a different book. These broken links have now been fixed – they point to the right place.
Mon Sep 15 09:51:31 EDT 2014
Joey’s office hours will be switching from 6pm-7pm to 5pm-6pm tonight to accomodate the Arduino workshop. Regular schedule will resume next week.
Sun Sep 14 14:48:48 EDT 2014
Homework 2 is now posted on the web site.
Sun Sep 7 18:34:19 EDT 2014
This message is for students in Prof. Ahmed’s section who are also enrolled in Enhancing Honors. To avoid the conflict tomorrow (Monday, Sept 8) between Honors lab and the Enhancing Honors class, we have have moved Honors lab TOMORROW ONLY to an earlier time: 4:40pm to 6:20pm. The Lab locations are the same as those listed on the Class Schedule.
Fri Sep 5 17:56:46 EDT 2014
Homework 1 is up on the web site. It is due in this coming Thursday.
Thu Sep 3 18:03:26 EDT 2014
Welcome to CS2500. This is section of the course web page is the "blog" – we recommend you check it daily, as we post news about the class here.