This 1-credit seminar is designed to teach the essentials of using a computer effectively for EECS students. While the target audience is CS/CE/DS students, any student wishing to learn how to use their computer much more effectively is encouraged to join. Topics covered include shells, environment, scripting, build systems, compilers, debugging tools, and version control. The end of the course will be open to student input for interesting topics to cover.
Updates
Course Pre-Requisites
The only enforced pre-requisite for this course is ENGN 101/151 or EECS 182/183, however it is strongly advised that students have either taken or are concurrently enrolled in EECS 280.
It is expected that students are currently enrolled in at least one course involving non-trivial software projects (e.g. EECS 280 or 281). If you are not enrolled in a programming course this term, you must have previously taken a programming course where you still have access to the projects you have completed.
Syllabus & Essential Info
Course Staff
For general issues, e-mail the course staff at c4cs-staff@umich.edu. For sensitive issues, please e-mail Marcus directly.
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| Marcus Darden | Samiur Khan | Christina Liu | Amrit Hariharan | Stevie Triesenberg | Tarun Khubchandani |
| mmdarden@umich.edu | samkhan@umich.edu | cyanliu@umich.edu | amrith@umich.edu | sltries@umich.edu | tarunsk@umich.edu |
Course Resources
Course Q&A / Forum – Piazza
Assignment Submission & Grades – Gradescope
- Gradescope entry code:
92R5Z7
To borrow a CSE laptop for the semester, contact Don Winsor at don@umich.edu.
Course Meeting Time and Location
- Section 001 (26357)
- 220 CHRYS (Auditorium), Friday 10:00AM — 11:30AM
Schedule
| Topic | Lecture Materials | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Segment 1: Introduction and Basics | |||
| Week 1 | 01/05/2018 |
Introduction, Virtual Machines, & Command Line Primer Lecture
Homework
Advanced
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Syllabus week! Don’t expect anything too deep here. Just an easy introduction to the C4CS curriculum. B1G TEN Commands cd ● ls ● mkdir ● mv ● pwd ● rm ● touch |
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mmdarden |
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| Week 2 | 01/12/2018 |
Basic Git Lecture
Homework
Advanced
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During lecture, Prof. Darden was using a program called B1G TEN Commands git ● head ● tail ● less ● cut ● man ● tree ● cp |
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mmdarden |
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| Week 3 | 01/19/2018 |
Shells, Environment, Scripting, and Bash Lecture
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Prof Darden mentioned Homebrew (a package manager for Mac) during lecture. It’s an extremely useful tool for Mac users and can speed up environment setups. B1G TEN Commands chmod ● man ● file ● echo ● seq ● true ● which ● export ● yes ● $_ ● $variable ● history ● grep |
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mmdarden |
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| Segment 2: Being Efficient | |||
| Week 4 | 01/26/2018 |
Editors Lecture
Homework
Advanced
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Every developer has their own go-to editor that they’ve configured and are familiar with (try talking to each of the staff - it may cause quite a debate). It doesn’t necessarily matter what you use as long as you’re comfortable with it, though it is definitely beneficial to know at least one Terminal-Based Text Editor. B1G TEN Commands objdump ● stat ● ed ● sed ● vi ● emacs |
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mmdarden |
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| Week 5 | 02/02/2018 |
Git II Lecture
Homework
Advanced
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Some tips and tricks to make working with git more enjoyable. Git II is an OH++ topic, the sessions are February 10, 10-11:30a and 11:30a-1p in 1670 BBB. Asciicasts: Asciicast 1 ● Asciicast 2 B1G TEN Commands git |
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mmdarden |
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| Week 6 | 02/09/2018 |
Unix II Lecture
Homework
Advanced
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mmdarden |
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| Week 6b | 02/10/2018 |
Office Hours ++ (Git II) Lecture
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Attendance is completely optional! If you come, we’ll be helping you through Advanced Homework 5 and covering some additional Git related awesomeness. |
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staff |
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No homework this week! |
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| Segment 3: Developing | |||
| Week 7 | 02/16/2018 |
Unit Testing and Python Lecture
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Created an RPN calculator in Python. |
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mmdarden |
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| Week 8 | 02/23/2018 |
Unit Testing and Python OH++ (Optional) Lecture
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Attendance is completely optional! If you come, we’ll be working on extending the RPN calculator built in class. |
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staff |
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| Week 9 | 03/02/2018 |
No lecture, Spring break |
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n/a |
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No homework this week! |
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| Week 10 | 03/09/2018 |
Build Systems Lecture
Homework
Advanced
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mmdarden |
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| Week 11 | 03/16/2018 |
Debuggers Lecture
Homework
Advanced
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Debuggers are great tools, and visual debuggers can be a huge time (and sanity) saver. Remember though, these visual debuggers do nothing more than provide an nice interface over their command line equivalents. Check out this browser based frontend to GDB. |
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mmdarden |
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| Segment 4: Standing on the Shoulders of Giants | |||
| Week 12 | 03/23/2018 |
Package Managers & Development Environment Lecture
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mmdarden |
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| Week 13 | 03/30/2018 |
IDEs Lecture
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mmdarden |
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| Week 13b | 03/31/2018 |
Office Hours ++ (Vim) Lecture
Homework
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staff |
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No homework this week! |
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| Week 14 | 04/06/2018 |
A Sampling of Other Things Lecture
Homework
Advanced
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mmdarden |
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| Week 15 | 04/13/2018 |
Staff Lecture Lecture
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TBA |
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No homework this week! |
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Attendance, Grading, and Homework
This course is graded on a straight scale, it will not be curved. There are a total of 100 possible points in this course. You are expected to earn 40 points from Homework, 30 points from Attendance and Participation, and 30 points from Advanced Exercises, however each section has modest opportunity for extra credit that can cover missing points elsewhere.
As the semester progresses, if you'd like to see how you're doing you can enter your scores into this table.
Range notation [90,93) means 90 is included and 93 is not
Final Grades
| A+ >100 |
A [93,100] |
A- [90,93) |
B+ [86.7,90) |
B [83.3,86.7) |
B- [80,83.3) |
C+ [76.7,80) |
C [73.3,76.7) |
C- [70,73.3) |
D+ [66.7,70) |
D [63.3,66.7) |
D- [60,63.3) |
F [0,60) |
|---|
Homework (40% / 40 points)
There are 12 homework assignments in the course. Each homework assignment is worth 4 points. Any points over 40 points are worth half their value, that is if a student completes all 12 assignments with a perfect score, their total points earned from homework will be 40 + (0.5×8) = 44.
Late assignments will not be accepted. Notice that one can miss/skip up to two assignments and still receive the full 40 homework points.
Homework Effort and Grading
This is a 1 credit course and the homeworks are designed to be commensurate with that. Each assignment should take 60–90 minutes on average. The goal of the homeworks is to reinforce concepts introduced in lecture and to give hands-on experience.
We will give each homework a “raw” grade in Gradescope, which will then convert to a final score using the following conversion:
- [0,0.25] → 0 points
- No / very little effort
- (0.25,2] → 2 points
- Some effort, but not quite there
- (2,4] → 4 points
- Solid effort, completed successfully
The idea here is that homework does not have to 100% perfect to receive full credit. In addition, course staff can be a little “nit-picky”, taking off tenths of points to draw your attention to corrections and suggestions without actually penalizing your grade.
Grading Issues / Regrade Requests
Regrades are handled on Gradescope. We will close regrade requests roughly one week after assignments are returned.Attendance and Participation (30% / 30 points)
Attendance is required for this course. Bring your laptop to every lecture. Lectures will include some quick quizzes used both to verify comprehension and attendance. Generally, correct answers will be worth full credit and incorrect answers half credit (you were there, but didn’t get it right). Generally, we will ask at least three questions during class. Not all questions may count for attendance credit. We reserve the right to experiment with this mechanism a bit throughout the semester and vary when and how we ask questions or validate attendance.
Each week can earn up to 3 attendance and participation points. Any points over 30 points are worth half their value, that is if a student attends and participates for all 12 weeks, their total points earned from attendance and participation will be 30 + (0.5×6) = 33.
Notice that you can miss up to two weeks without any penalty. This is by design to accommodate unexpected illness, emergencies, travel for interviews, or any other situations. Please do not ask for excused absences for one-off issues that are already covered by this policy. If extenuating circumstances cause you to miss more than two weeks, please contact us and we can work something out.
We will not count attendance for the first week of class.
Advanced Exercises (30% / 30 points)
Each week (except the first and last) will have at least one advanced exercise option. The intention is to give a guided exploration of topics that people find most interesting. These advanced exercises will also be a little more time consuming (2-3 hours), have a little less guidance, and require you to research and discover a little on your own. Over the course of the semester, you are expected to do three of the advanced exercises.
Advanced exercises may only be submitted at office hours, which can be viewed from the course calendar at the top of the page. Advanced exercises come with a deadline roughly two weeks after they are released, however it is your responsibility to ensure you select an office hours session to attend before the deadline.
We will aim to announce any changes to the regular office hours schedule at least one week in advance (via Piazza and the updated course calendar), however sometimes life happens, in which case we may adjust deadlines if necessary.
Advanced Exercises Grading
The advanced exercises are graded on a simple all or nothing system, either you did the whole thing or you did not.
The class is divided into four sections, Introduction and Basics, Being Efficient, Developing, and Standing on the Shoulders of Giants. To encourage you to get started early and spread the advanced exercises load across the semester, the first advanced exercise you submit from each section is worth 10 points. Another advanced exercise in the same section is worth 5 points. If you do one advanced exercise from each section, the final section's first advanced exercise is worth half: 5 points. If a student completes all 11 advanced exercise, they will earn (10 + 5) + (10 + 5 + 5) + (10 + 5 + 5 ) + (5 + 5 + 5) = 70 points.
Completing advanced exercises 2 or more days prior to the due date will result in 2 extra credit points being awarded for the assignment. Completing advanced exercises 1 day prior to the due date will result in 1 extra credit point being awarded for the assignment.
Engineering Honor Code
To review the current Engineering Honor Code, refer to the Honor Council page on the Office of Student Support and Accountability website.