Syllabus

Description

Y13 is quite different from your experience in Y11 and Y12. We think of all three years as a three-course sequence, modeled closely after what you will encounter at many Computer Science university departments. Y11 is an introduction to programming, Y12 is a software development/data structures course and Y13 is a computer organization introduction.

This year you will learn the basics of how computers work. The problem sets for this year are different from Y12. Instead of creating different products that have open-ended components, you are asked to solve specific closed problems. Once you are done figuring out those problems, you are done with the problem set. Some of you will find comfort in this kind of work, and others will miss the freedom of software development. Either way, the focus is on giving you the skills to succeed in future CS programs.

We have an exam at end of the term. We also have mock exams after the Chinese New Year.

Expectations

You are expected to:

• Ask questions
• Attend class
• Ask for help when you need it
• Cite any sources that you use (regardless of the platform in which they are accessed)
• Take up creative endeavors in the problem sets
• Have fun 🙂

Academic Honesty

Credit to Harvard’s CS50 class:

This course’s philosophy on academic honesty is best stated as “be reasonable.” The course recognizes that interactions with classmates and others can facilitate mastery of the course’s material. However, there remains a line between enlisting the help of another and submitting the work of another. This policy characterizes both sides of that line.

The essence of all work that you submit to this course must be your own. Collaboration on assigned projects is not permitted except to the extent that you may ask classmates and others for help so long as that help does not reduce to another doing your work for you unless they are your partner in a group project. Generally speaking, when asking for help, you may show your code to others, but you may not view theirs, so long as you and they respect this policy’s other constraints. Collaboration on the course’s final project is permitted to the extent prescribed by its specification.

Below are rules of thumb that (inexhaustively) characterize acts that the course considers reasonable and not reasonable. If in doubt as to whether some act is reasonable, do not commit it until you solicit and receive approval in writing from the course’s heads. Acts considered not reasonable by the course are handled harshly. If the course refers some matter for disciplinary action and the outcome is punitive, the course reserves the right to impose local sanctions on top of that outcome that may include an unsatisfactory or failing grade for work submitted or for the course itself. The course ordinarily recommends exclusion (i.e., required withdrawal) from the course itself.

Reasonable

• Communicating with classmates about projects in English (or some other spoken language).
• Discussing the course’s material with others in order to understand it better.
• Helping a classmate identify a bug in his or her code at office hours, elsewhere, or even online, as by viewing, compiling, or running his or her code, even on your own computer.
• Incorporating a few lines of code that you find online or elsewhere into your own code, provided that those lines are not themselves solutions to projects and that you cite the lines’ origins.
• Sending or showing code that you’ve written to someone, possibly a classmate, so that he or she might help you identify and fix a bug.
• Sharing a few lines of your own code online so that others might help you identify and fix a bug.
• Turning to the web or elsewhere for instruction beyond the course’s own, for references, and for solutions to technical difficulties, but not for outright solutions to projects.
• Whiteboarding solutions to projects with others using diagrams or pseudocode but not actual code.
• Working with (and even paying) a tutor to help you with the course, provided the tutor does not do your work for you.

Not Reasonable

• Accessing a solution to some project to (re-)submitting your own.
• Asking a classmate to see his or her solution to a project before (re-)submitting your own.
• Decompiling, deobfuscating, or disassembling the staff’s solutions to projects.
• Failing to cite (as with comments) the origins of code or techniques that you discover outside of the course’s own lessons and integrate into your own work, even while respecting this policy’s other constraints.
• Giving or showing to a classmate a solution to a project when it is he or she, and not you, who is struggling to solve it.
• Paying or offering to pay an individual for work that you may submit as (part of) your own.
• Searching for or soliciting outright solutions to projects online or elsewhere.
• Splitting an assigned project’s workload with another individual and combining your work.
• Submitting (after possibly modifying) the work of another individual beyond the few lines allowed herein.
• Submitting the same or similar work to this course that you have submitted or will submit to another.
• Submitting work to this course that you intend to use outside of the course (e.g., for a job) without prior approval from the course’s heads.
• Viewing another’s solution to a project and basing your own solution on it.