CIS300 Announcements


April 22

As I mentioned on Weds., we will have our last exam on Friday, April 29. Please contact me as soon as possible if you have a conflict on that date.

I will speak more on Monday about the exam, but I can tell you that the topics will be

Because my wife has a medical emergency, I must take her to a Kansas City hospital on Friday morning. I hope that I can return to Manhattan in time for the 1:30pm lecture, but if I am not there by 1:45pm, then I am afraid that class is cancelled and that I will give the lecture on Monday.

I will return to Manhattan on Friday as soon as possible, so if I miss the 1:30pm lecture, I will go straight to my office and I will keep ``office hours'' till 5pm. I am sorry about this complication.

Also, a secretary from the Computer Science Office will be at the 1:30pm lecture to give you evaluation forms to complete. Please be frank in stating what worked well and what worked poorly this semester.

April 20

If your T.A. is Ms. Meadows, please be advised that Ms. Meadows was seriously ill during the month of March and fell behind on grading the CIS300 assignments. At this date, she has graded all Assignment 4 submissions and some of the Assignment 5 submissions. I have asked her to grade Exam 2 immediately and send you the exam scores by this Saturday, April 23.

I will personally ensure that that the grades for Assignments 5-6-7 are sent to you before the end of classes (May 6).

I am very sorry about the delays, and I will ensure that all work will be fairly and correctly marked.

April 4

There was a small error in the advice page regarding Assignment 6: please note that the insert method you write must return a boolean answer, which indicates whether the insertion was successful. I have corrected the advice page.

I have posted a short review for Exam 2 here.

April 1

The schedule for the next two weeks goes like this: Please contact me as soon as possible if you have a conflict on 11 April that prevents you from taking Exam 2.

March 4

There is no lecture on Monday, 7 March. Sorry.

March 2

During lecture today, someone asked if it is possible for a Baby Checkers piece to move to a square that lets it help capture two opponent pieces. I responded that I thought it was. Now, I realize it is not, because the piece would have to move into a square where it is bounded on two sides by opponent pieces. So it gets captured first! Here's an example. Say we have a game board that looks like this, and the Human is next to move: 
. H . .  
C . C H 
H . . . 
. . . .
The Human decides that it wants to move the piece in Row 0 forwards one square to here: 
. . . . 
C H C H
H . . .
. . . .
Alas, the rules of Baby Checkers state that the Human's piece is captured by its opponents, 
. . . . 
C ! C H
H . . .
. . . .
before the Human's piece can help capture any opponents.

February 18

The first exam is scheduled for Monday, 28 February, at class time. A preview of the exam will be given on Monday, 21 February.

There are some small changes in office hours for Ms. Meadows (on Thursdays) and myself (on Thursdays and Fridays).

I must be away from campus from February 22 through March 1. For this reason, there will be no lectures on February 23 and 25.

February 10

Please remember that you must submit Assignment 3 as a jar file, so that when the jar file is unzipped, it constructs a folder named Assign3, and within Assign3, there are the folders (packages) Database and TestTheDatabase.

As noted on the Assignment 3 sheet, when you ask BlueJ to make the jar file for your project named Assign3, BlueJ forgets to put the enclosing Assign3 folder into the jar file.

So, you must start a command window and type the jar command, jar c Assign3 > Assign3.jar. This builds the jar file correctly. I placed an explanation about how to do this at http://www.cis.ksu.edu/~schmidt/300s05/bluej.packages.html

Alas, I have spoken to a number of people who have trouble working with command windows. Sooner or later, you must learn how to use a command window to ``talk'' to the operating system. But if time is tight, and and you are lost working with the command window, then it is OK to use a standard Zip program (like WinZip) to make a .zip file to submit. (Here is a little secret: jar is a free copy of Zip, and .jar files are just .zip files.)

If you use a Zip program to make your jar file, ensure that when your file is unzipped, it creates a folder named Assign3, which contains the packages Database and TestTheDatabase. Check this yourself before you submit your jar/zip file!

February 9

There are two small errors in the Assignment 3 handout: First, the reference to DeleteButton should be of course to DeleteController. Second, I forgot to revise interface Key to include the lessthan operation. I have fixed both of these, and the corrected handout and code is posted in www.cis.ksu.edu/~schmidt/300s05/Assign/Assn3

Mr. Homer's Monday office hours have now changed to 12:30-1:30pm.

February 7

My office hours for this Friday, 11 February, will be 2:30-3:30pm. I apologize for the change in schedule, but I have another commitment during the regular time.

February 2

The TAs have encountered a lot of difficulties when grading Assignment 1. For this reason, the scoring results will be delayed a day or two. Some of you might receive emails asking that you make changes to your submission and resubmit right away, so that your assignment can be scored with the others.

Many of the problems arose from these errors:

  1. The submission was not organized into two packages, Dealer and HandOfCards, as requested.

    If you did not organize your program into packages, then your program is not finished, and it will not operate when the TAs test it. If you are a BlueJ user, please read the material at http://www.cis.ksu.edu/~schmidt/300s05/bluej.packages.html to learn how to make packages in BlueJ. Use of packages is required for the rest of the course.

  2. The submission was not ready for testing because not all components were compiled. This a carelessness that must not happen in the future.

  3. The jar file was structured improperly. Alas, the newest version of BlueJ generates jar files in the improper structure. I am struggling to find a work-around for Assignment 3.

  4. The main method in class Start was written with an incorrect header line. The correct header line should read: 
    public static void main(String[] args)
    The formal parameter, args, is required. Alas, BlueJ is not smart enough to enforce this requirement.
We will work hard this week to ensure that everyone knows how to submit a working program organized into packages.

If you have any questions about the above, please do not hesitate to visit my office during my office hours on Thursday and Friday at 3:30-4:30pm.

From Assignment 3 onwards, there will not be an opportunity to resubmit an assignment due to the errors listed above. Thanks for your patience.

January 27

First, I apologize that the submit program for Assignment 1 thought that your submission was due on January 25, 2004. I will ensure that all future assignments have due dates in 2005. Please rest assured that your submissions have been saved by the submit program, nonetheless.

Also, the due date for Assignment 2 is next Monday, January 31.

January 13

I often prepare program examples on a linux system, and as a result, the text files I create have an internal represetation that some Windows-based text editors (notably, notepad) do not understand.

For example, the Java files for the voting example, http://www.cis.ksu.edu/~schmidt/300s05/Lectures/VoteExample , were typed in linux format. If your editor cannot display the files properly, then you should try this: (i) use wordpad to read the file (this always works); (ii) use wordpad to Save the opened file back to itself. (This reformats the file in Windows/DOS format.)

January 12

There is no class on Monday, 17 January.

I must attend a conference the week of 17 January. For this reason, the lectures on 19 and 21 January will be conducted by the Teaching Assistants, and there is no lecture on Monday, 24 January.