CS 62 Administrative

Handouts, announcements, etc.

All handouts will be distributed on the course web page. This will include lecture notes/slides, assignments and other handouts. You are responsible for all material and announcements posted on the class web page, so please check it regularly. If this is a problem for anyone, feel free to come talk to the instructors. For time critical announcements, we will use e-mail.

Course Description

This course couples work on program design, analysis, and verification with an introduction to the study of data structures that are important in the construction of sophisticated computer programs. Students are expected to program in the object-oriented programming language Java. Students will learn to design complex and reliable software engineering systems through writing code modules that are easy to read, debug, test, verify, analyze, and modify.

This course is divided into three rough modules (each roughly corresponding to a checkpoint):

• Java & Basic Data Structures: We’ll learn the basics of Java syntax, review classes, and introduce new topics important in object oriented programming (OOP) design such as inheritance, static versus instance variables, and interfaces. We’ll learn that data structures are abstract and theoretically sound ways for holding and processing data, and we’ll see and analyze our first basic data structures: array lists, singly linked lists, doubly linked lists, stacks, and queues.
• Sorting & Searching: We’ll cover canonical algorithms that help with sorting data (selection sort, insertion sort, mergesort, quicksort, heapsort) in detail. We’ll talk about data structures for keeping data quickly searchable (namely, lots of different kinds of trees as well as dictionaries and hash tables).
• Graphs & Software Engineering: Graphs, as a data structure, do so much for computer scientists. We’ll learn how they’re represented, and several algorithms for traversing them (breadth first versus depth first search), and traversing them efficiently, such as calculating the shortest path between two nodes in a graph. Your final project will use human-centered design methods to solve real world problems by identifying which data structures to use and applying them.

Coursework

Grade Calculation

• 40%% Checkpoints
• 30% Weekly assignments
• 10% Final project
• 10% Quizzes
• 5% Lab participation

Assignments

We will have roughly weekly assignments. Most will be programming assignments, though some may also have an experimental component and/or a short writeup especially on ethical issues.

Group Work

Each week there will be a short, group assignment. You must attend your group sessions and complete the group assignment. These group assignments will be low-stakes and will only be graded based on participation (i.e., showing up and contributing).

Weekly quizzes

We will start each Thursday class with a short (approximately 5 minutes) quiz. The quizzes will be 1-2 problems related to the previous class or two. The quizzes are meant to encourage you to stay up to date with the material as well as to give you practice on exam-like questions to help prepare you for the midterm/final. I will drop your lowest quiz score.

Exams

We will have two in-class exams (a midterm and a final) which are shown on the schedule on the course web page. Among other topics, exams will involve writing code on paper, not at a computer. To prepare for this, we recommend practicing writing code on paper (or on the whiteboards in the lab) throughout the class. The final will be cumulative

Course policies

Late policy

We understand that sometimes things get busy, things come up, you get sick, etc. To help in these situations, you may submit two assignments late by up 24 hours. Beyond this, except under very extenuating circumstances, we will not accept late assignments.

Academic honesty and collaboration

We take academic honesty very seriously.

You are encouraged to get together in small groups to discuss material from the lectures and text. However, the work that you turn in must be done independently, unless an assignment is explicitly designated as one in which collaboration is allowed.

In particular, your work must not be based on information obtained from sources other than those approved for the course (i.e., the text, web pages linked from the course web page, and materials provided in lecture). You should never copy another students code or solutions, exchange computer files, or share your code or solutions with anyone else in the class until after an assignment is due. You may, however, use any code that we provide to you or that comes from the textbook, as long as you acknowledge the source. Additionally, the tutors are allowed to help you with your code.

A few rules to follow for this course to keep you out of trouble:

• If you talk with someone in the class about a problem, you should not take notes. If you understand the material you talked about, you should be able to recreate it on your own.
• Similarly, if you talk with someone, you must wait 5 minutes before resuming work on the problem. Stretch. Use the restroom. Go for a quick walk. This will ensure that you really understand the material.
• You may not sit next to (or where you can see the screen of) anyone you are talking with about the assignment.
• The only time you may look at someone else's screen when they are working on an assignment is if they are asking you for help with a syntax error. You should not look at someone else's code to help yourself!

Generative AI tools (e.g., ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, CoPilot, ...)

• You should be writing all of your code on your own without any additional tools beyond VS Code (without AI tools installed). AI tools should not be used on the assignments in this class in any way (either to generate code or to assist you in debugging code, etc.).
• You may use it to help you study for exams, e.g., to help give an explanation of a topic/idea covered in class or by having it generate sample questions.

If you are ever unsure about what constitutes acceptable collaboration, please ask!

For more information see the Computer Science Department's Academic Honesty Policy and the college's policy.

Computer lab use

You may use your own laptop or the Computer Science department computers for this course. If you use the CS computer labs (which I encourage you to do), please read about the Computer Systems Policies.

Disability accommodations

If you need accommodations please contact the Disability Coordinator on your home campus. The process for Pomona students is available here.

Due to the nature of this course, extensions or alternative deadlines on assignments will not in general be allowed—extensions would lead to more stress due to overlapping deadlines.