Richard E. Pattis
Senior Lecturer
Department of Computer Science
and
Department of Informatics
Donald Bren School of Information
  and Computer Sciences
University of California, Irvine
Irvine, CA 92697
pattis@ics.uci.edu
Office: 4062 Bren Hall
Phone: (949) 824-2704
Fax:     (949) 824-4056


I have put my collection of Quotations for Learning and Programing on the web. I hope to continue expanding
(and correcting) it. I always welcome feedback (e.g., corrections, misattributions, other quotations).


I am starting to index, annotate, and put on the web various Education-Related Video Clips.


Spring 2008 Schedule

Teaching Duties: Information and Computer Science (ICS) 23 (Lecture A/Lab 1,2,3,4)
                          Final Exam: Tuesdsay, June 10, 4:00pm - 6:00pm (closed book/closed computer)

Please note that my office hours are open. There is no need to schedule an appointment ahead of time.
Just drop by; the wait is never long.

If you want debugging help, please ensure that your programming project is stored somewhere that I can
download it from, or you have it on a USB memory drive (or, just bring it loaded on your portable computer).

I plan to spend most of Wednesdays and Fridays in the labs (the faculty meetings do not occur every week);
if I am not in these labs at these time, check in my office.

Time/DayMondayTuesdayWednesdayThursdayFriday
9:30 -10:00  
 
 
 
Lab 1: ICS 23
ICS 183
 
 
Lab 1: ICS 23
ICS 183
10:00 -10:30  
 
 
 
Lab 1: ICS 23
ICS 183
 
 
Lab 1: ICS 23
ICS 183
10:30-11:00  
 
 
 
Lab 1: ICS 23
ICS 183
 
 
Lab 1: ICS 23
ICS 183
11:00-11:30  
 
 
 
Lab 2: ICS 23
ICS 183
 
 
Lab 2: ICS 23
ICS 183
11:30-12:00  
 
 
 
Lab 2: ICS 23
ICS 183
 
 
Lab 2: ICS 23
ICS 183
12:00-12:30 Office Hours
DBH 4062
Office Hours
DBH 4062
Lab 2: ICS 23
ICS 183
Office Hours
DBH 4062
Lab 2: ICS 23
ICS 183
12:30-  1:00 Office Hours
DBH 4062
Office Hours
DBH 4062
Faculty Meeting
DBH 3/4/5-011
Office Hours
DBH 4062
Lab 3: ICS 23
ICS 183
  1:00-  1:30 Office Hours
DBH 4062
Office Hours
DBH 4062
Faculty Meeting
DBH 3/4/5-011
Office Hours
DBH 4062
Lab 3: ICS 23
ICS 183
  1:30-  2:00 Office Hours
DBH 4062
Office Hours
DBH 4062
Faculty Meeting
DBH 3/4/5-011
Office Hours
DBH 4062
Lab 3: ICS 23
ICS 183
  2:00-  2:30 Office Hours
DBH 4062
Office Hours
DBH 4062
Lab 4: ICS 23
ICS 183
Office Hours
DBH 4062
Lab 4: ICS 23
ICS 183
  2:30-  3:00 Office Hours
DBH 4062
Office Hours
DBH 4062
Lab 4: ICS 23
ICS 183
Office Hours
DBH 4062
Lab 4: ICS 23
ICS 183
  3:00-  3:30 Office Hours
DBH 4062
Office Hours
DBH 4062
Lab 4: ICS 23
ICS 183
Office Hours
DBH 4062
Faculty Meeting
DBH 3/4/5-011
  3:30-  4:00 Office Hours
DBH 4062
Lecture ICS 23
ICS 174
Office Hours
DBH 4062
Lecture ICS 23
ICS 174
Faculty Meeting
DBH 3/4/5-011
  4:00-  4:30 Office Hours
DBH 4062
Lecture ICS 23
ICS 174
Office Hours
DBH 4062
Lecture ICS 23
ICS 174
Faculty Meeting
DBH 3/4/5-011
  4:30-  5:00 Office Hours
DBH 4062
Lecture ICS 23
ICS 174
Office Hours
DBH 4062
Lecture ICS 23
ICS 174
Faculty Meeting
DBH 3/4/5-011


Interesting Snippets

While developing a manuscript for a textbook on the Ada programming language in the late 1980s, I wrote a chapter on EBNF and began teaching it on the "first" day of my CS-1 class: primarily as a microcosm of programming, but also as a practical tool for later describing the syntax of Ada. These 21 pages (less than 1/4 the size of the original Karel book) discuss the sequence, choice, option, repetition, and recursion control structures (along with "procedural" abstracton via named EBNF rules). They explore various methods of proving that tokens satisfy descriptions, that descriptions are equivalent (and how to simplify them), and the difference between syntax and semantics. I have continued to use this approach until this day in my CS-1 classes.

A new cure for Short Bowel Syndrome (Brainstorm to Breakthrough: A Surgical Procedure is Born).

An excerpt from the chapter "He Fixes Radios by Thinking!" from the book "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!": Adventures of a Curious Character (start at the bottom of page 18: "One day I got a telephone call..." and finish at the bottom of page 20: "...never thought that was possible.") Explains why debugging is best accomplished by thinking, not fiddling.

If Charles Schultz wrote Karel the Robot

Arlo and Janis: The hardest teacher

Doonesbury: Walden's Last B

My Favorite Graph: I show this graph (and its associated article) in class after discussing general graph theory terminology (up to connected components). It is scary and compelling at the same time.

De Millo, Lipton, and Perlis: Social Processes and Proofs of Theorems and Programs Communications of the ACM, May 1979; Volume 22, Number 5, Pages 271-280.


Philosphical Musings

Doubts are such tiny things. A mind with no room for doubts must have no room for thoughts either. -R. Pattis


The following dialog is from the transcript of "Between Time and Timbuktu" (a synthesis of the writings of Kurt Vonnegut) For more on Bokononism, from which this passage is inspired, see The Books of Bokonon (from the novel "Cat's Cradle").

Narrator: In the beginning, G-d created the Earth, and he said, "Let there be mud." And there was mud. And G-d said, "Let Us make living creatures out of mud, so the mud can see what We have done." And G-d created every living creature that now moveth, and one was man. Mud-as-man alone could speak. "What is the purpose of all this?" man asked politely. "Everything must have a purpose?" asked G-d. "Certainly," said man. Then I leave it up to you to think of one for all of this," said G-d. And he went away.

Stony Stevenson: I feel very unimportant compared to you [G-d].

Voice of Bokonon: The only way you can feel the least bit important is to think of all the mud that didn't even get to sit up and look around.

SS: I got so much, and most mud got so little.


SIGCSE 2006 Talk

You can click here to download the zip file of my SIGCSE 2006 Talk. It contains all the PowerPoint slides, which contain many high-resolution photos as well as half-dozen low-resolution videos (it occupies almost 100Mb). If you load the talk into powerpoint, and select View | Notes Page, you can see most of the text that I presented during the actual talk -minus adlibs.


CS-1: Forwards and Backwards

You can click here to download the zip file of my Last Talk at CMU.

Honors Day Talk, UCI, Spring 2008

You can click here to download the zip file of my Honors Day Talk.