Professor Paul Chow
Fall 1996
APS 105S -- Computer Fundamentals -- is designed to give you an introduction to computer systems and their role in problem solving in science and engineering, and to provide you with the basics for studies in greater depth in subsequent years. The course consists of lectures, laboratories and tutorials. Major topics to be covered in the lectures include: Problem solving; Algorithms; Data Structures; Programming in Turing and C; Computer Organization; and Operating Systems. The laboratories will provide you with an opportunity to exercise concepts introduced in the lectures through a number of programming assignments using the Turing programming language.
There is (will be) a home page for this course. It can be found by going to http://www.ecf.toronto.edu/apsc/courses/
and clicking on the link to APS105F. The most recent versions of this handout, many others, and the labs, will be accessible here. Watch this page for updates on test dates and locations, and other news for the class.
Professor Paul Chow
LP484A
978-2402
pc@eecg.toronto.edu
Best to get me after lectures.
The schedule below shows the times for the lab sections. While lab access and use are possible any time, you must regularly attend your scheduled lab session. Teaching assistants will be available to answer any questions and offer help at those sessions, and will assign you a grade based on your progress in each lab session. If you have the assignment working before the lab session, then you only need to attend long enough to get a grade assigned.
The lab assignments consist of programming assignments using the Turing and C programming languages. A handout describing each assignment will be distributed in class the week prior to the beginning of the assignment. The lab assignments will take a substantial amount of your time. It is important to start as early as possible on your assignments and to avoid procrastination.
Although the assignments do not contribute significantly to your final grade, you must work and finish each assignment. The lab quizzes, which contribute substantially your grade, will be based largely on these assignments. It is unlikely you will be able to score well on these quizzes if you do not work independently on and finish the assignments.
The Lab schedule will be as follows this term:
Tutorials are scheduled for Thursday from 10-11am in room SF1013. However, they will be held only when necessary, as announced in class. No new material will be presented in the tutorial sessions. They are used to deal with difficulties experienced in in understanding key concepts or programming.
For those students who already have programming experience, there is no required textbook. However there is supplemental reading material as described below.
Those students with little or no programming experience require the text:
Elliot B. Koffman, Richard C. Holt, and Chrysanne Dimarco, Turing - Problem Solving and Program Design, Addison-Wesley, Don Mills, 1994. ISBN-201-42640-4
All students will need a Turing language reference book. The book by Koffman, Holt and Dimarco is quite suitable for this purpose, but a cheaper alternative for experienced programmers is:
R.C. Holt, Turing Reference Manual, fifth edition, HSA, Toronto, 1994. (This book is available with or without software. You do not need to buy the software unless you wish to run Turing on your own personal computer.)The above books are available at the University Bookstores. There will also be an OOT Software Sale. See the form at the end of this handout.
All students will need a UNIX guide to be able to use the Engineering Computing Facility computers in the laboratory.
J.D. Gorrie, Getting Started with UNIXThis is available from the ECE Photocopy Room, SFB540, at a reproduction cost of about $3. In addition to the above books, every student in the course is expected to understand a number of basic concepts in computer hardware, computer software and computer science, which will be covered in the lectures, but will not necessarily be found in the recommended books above. This material can be found in some book chapters that will supplement the concepts presented in the lectures
.
It is your responsibility to find
and read this material. You are responsible for it on the midterm and
examination.
Read the following material on Computer Structure,
Experienced programmers may substitute the appropriate sections of the
Turing Reference Manual for the Koffman sections listed.
Either Goldschlager or Brookshear will usually suffice.
It is not necessary to read both references,
although there is no harm in doing so.
Koffman does not describe the Turing implementation of pointers.
The lectures will attempt to do this in some detail.
There will be one mid-term test, two lab quizzes and a final exam. The test will focus mainly on the material covered by the lectures, while the quizzes will focus on the programming language and the programming assignments. The final exam will be comprehensive, covering all material. The schedule for the test and quizzes is as follows:
The composition of the final grade is as follows:
The exam and midterm are No Calculators and No Aids (Type A).
If you would like clarifications or explanations of laboratory materials, the first sources of help are the Teaching Assistants (TAs) in the laboratory. Sending email to one of the TAs should also elicit some response. Otherwise, feel free to get in touch with the instructor.
Practice is the only way to learn programming. If you do only the assigned laboratory exercises of this course, you will not develop your programming skills adequately to earn a decent mark in this course nor to sustain you in the requirements of the second year computing courses. There are many programming exercises in Koffman. If you have that text, you should do enough of them to make yourself confident in programming. A set of programming exercises will be available from the ECE Photocopy room (SFB540) for a modest fee. Ask for APS105 Exercises. Try some of them. Some solutions can be found on the ECF computers in /usr/copy/aps105. You are advised to try to solve a problem yourself before looking at its solution.
If you wish to make a purchase at the OOT sale, bring this form with you.
OOT SOFTWARE FOR COMPUTER SCIENCE COURSES
Many students are using the Turing Software on their own computers and
too often have used illegal copies. In future, whenever a student submits a
piece of work for marking that has been done on a personal computer (other
than a university machine), it should include the registration number that
has been given to the student when a legal copy of software is purchased or
registered with HSA Inc.
This package will be for personal/individual use only (one per student).
Resale is not permitted.
The date and locations are as follows:
Downtown: Monday Sept. 23, 1996 203 College St. Suite 305 2:00pm - 7:00pm
Scarborough: Thursday Sept. 12th, 1996 Java Junction 1:00pm - 6:00pm
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Student Name: ECE Course: APS 105F
Instructor's Name: Paul Chow
Registration Number :
(1) WinOOT software $35.00
(2) DOS OOT software $35.00
(3) MacOOT software $35.00
(4) WinOOT software & User's Manual $45.00
(5) DOS OOT software & User's Manual $45.00
(6) MacOOT software & User's Manual $45.00
(7) OOT User's Manual Only $10.00
(8) Object Oriented Turing Package $90.00
(WinOOT, DOS OOT, User's Manual, Reference Manual)
Upgrades:
(1) upgrade from Turing to OOT (software only) $25.00
(2) upgrade from Turing to OOT (full package) $65.00
Students requesting upgrades must bring their disks.