Introduction to Computer Science

• Course: Introduction to Computer Science (CH08-320101)
• Semester: Fall 2018
• Instructor: Jürgen Schönwälder
• TA (Group D): Bayer, Jonas
• TA (Group E): David, Marco
• TA (Group B): Huynh, Dung Tri
• TA (Group C): Mana, Irsida
• TA (Group A): Pal, Abhik
• Class: Tuesday, 08:15-09:30 (Lecture Hall Research II)
• Class: Tuesday, 09:45-11:00 (Lecture Hall Research II)
• Class: Thursday, 11:15-12:30 (Lecture Hall Research II)
• Midterm: Tuesday, 2018-10-30, 08:15-09:30 (Campus Center, east wing and west wing)
• Final: Thursday, 2018-12-20, 16:00-18:00 (SCC Hall 3+4)
• Office: Monday, 11:15-12:30 (Research I, Room 87)

The course covers the fundamental concepts and techniques of computer science in a bottom-up manner. Based on clear mathematical foundations (which are developed as needed) the course discusses abstract and concrete notions of computing machines, information, and algorithms, focusing on the question of representation versus meaning in Computer Science.

To develop a theoretical notion of computation, we introduce basic concepts of discrete mathematics with a focus on inductively defined structures. The functional programming language Haskell will be introduced and used as the primary programming language for the course. We cover a basic subset of Haskell that includes types, recursion, tuples, lists, strings, and higher-order functions. Back on the theoretical side, we cover the syntax and semantics of Boolean expressions and we explain how Boolean algebra relates to logic gates and digital circuits. On the technical side, we introduce the representation of basic data types such as numbers, characters, strings and dates as well as the basics of computer architecture and assembly programming. On the algorithmic side, the course introduces the notion of correctness and elementary complexity theory (big-O notation) and we introduce abstract data types.

• Slides
• Lecture Notes
• Haskell Slides
• Haskell Jupyter Notebook You can try to run the Jupyter Notebook on mybinder.org (wait until your virtual server has been created). Then press [upload] and select the notebook file [haskell.ipynb] that you have downloaded from the course web page. Then press the new [upload] button to push the code to the server. Finally, click on [haskell.ipynb] and cross your fingers.
• Source Code

• Eric Lehmann, F. Thomson Leighton, Albert R. Meyer, "Mathematics for Computer Science", 2018

• Haskell: An advanced purely functional programming language
• Real World Haskell (a book that is also available online)
• Haskell Tutorial (a relatively concise online tutorial)
• UNIX Tutorial for Beginners (a tutorial that can be downloaded and done offline)

The final grade is made up of the final exam (50%), the midterm exam (30%) and homework assignments (20%).

Electronic submission is the preferred way to hand in homework solutions. Please submit documents (plain ASCII/UTF-8 text or PDF, no Word) and your source code (packed into a tar or zip archive after removing all binaries and temporary files) via the online submission system. If you have problems, please contact one of the TAs.

Late submissions will not be accepted. Homeworks may need to be defended in an oral interview. In case you are ill, you have to follow the procedures defined in the university policies to obtain an official excuse. If you obtain an excuse, the new deadline will be calculated as follows:

1. Determine the number of days you were excused until the deadline day.
2. Determine the day of the end of your excuse and add the number of day you obtained in first step. This gives you the initial new deadline.
3. If the period between the end of your excuse and the new deadline calculated in the second step includes weekend days, add them as well to the new deadline. (Iterate this step if necessary.)

For any questions stated on assignment sheets, quiz sheets, exam sheets or during makeups, we by default expect a reasoning for the answer given, unless explicitely stated otherwise.

Students must submit solutions individually. If you copy material verbatim from the Internet (or other sources), you have to provide a proper reference. If we find your solution text on the Internet without a proper reference, you risk to lose your points. Any cheating cases will be reported to the registrar. In addition, you will lose the points (of course).

Any programs, which have to be written, will be evaluated based on the following criteria:

• correctness including proper handling of error conditions
• proper use of programming language constructs
• clarity of the program organization and design
• readability of the source code and any output produced

Source code must be accompanied by a README file providing an overview of the source files and giving instructions how to build the programs. A suitable Makefile is required if the build process involves more than a single source file.

If you are unhappy with the grading, please report immediately (within one week) to the TAs. If you can't resolve things, contact the instructor. Problem reports which come late, that is after the one week period, are not considered anymore.

The policy on makeup quizzes is the following: There won't be any quiz makeups. If you (a) get an official excuse for a quiz from the registrar's office or (b) approach we well in advance of the quiz with a very good reason for not being able to participate (e.g., because you take a GRE computer science subject test at the day of a quiz), then the weight of the final exam will be increased according to the weight of the quiz you got excused for.