HW 0: Warmup

Overview

In this assignment, we’ll familiarize ourselves with the course policies and the homework workflow, and we’ll respond to a reading about programming languages. We’ll also start learning about the Lambda Calculus, which is the focus of next week’s work.

Important Notes

  • For this first assignment, we ask you to work by yourself. All future assignments will permit pair-programming as an option.

  • This assignment covers important background and setup.

  • Because this assignment is shorter than most, it is worth 50 points (half of a regular assignment).

Part 1: Setup

In this part, you will make sure that you have access to all the materials you will need to do this (and future) assignments.

If you are using your own computer, we recommend bookmarking the following sites:

GitHub + Gradescope

All of your assignments this semester will be distributed and collected through a combination of GitHub and Gradescope.

  • Make sure you have given us your GitHub ID in the pre-semester survey.
  • You should have received an email to join the Gradescope course for CS 131 this semester. Make sure that you can access the course there. If you are not able to access Gradescope, please come to office hours and / or post your question on Piazza.
  • If you haven’t used git before, you may want to go through this article to install git on your computer and configure it to work with GitHub.

Repository

You’re now ready to access the files for this week’s assignment!

We are using a GitHub-based tool called GitHub Classroom to distribute assignments.

  1. Checkout the repository from GitHub classroom, by following the link to the assignment that is posted on Piazza.
  2. Now you have your own copy of the assignment files on GitHub. To get them onto your computer, work on them, and submit them, follow along with these instructions.

Part 2: Read and Respond (and test GitHub)

Syllabus

Read the syllabus and all the pages that link from it.

In your repository, edit the file responses.txt and add the following where indicated:

  • Three things from the syllabus that you think will help you learn this semester.
  • Any questions you have, after reading the syllabus.

As you work, commit and push your work to GitHub, as explained in the assignment howto.

Grace Hopper talk

Read the PDF file posted in the resources tab on Piazza. It is a talk by Captain (later Admiral) Grace Hopper.

Write a 42-word (i.e,. short) summary of the most important/interesting point(s).

As you work, commit and push your work to GitHub, as explained in the assignment howto.

When you are done with this part, you can submit your work to Gradescope, as explained in the assignment howto.

Part 3: Go Through the Lambda-Calculus Tutorial

Go through the on-line lambda calculus tutorial, which should take no more than an hour. There’s nothing to turn in for this part, but when you finish you’ll get the secret code word. Bring it to Monday’s class.