Getting Started with Lab Assignments

ICS H22

Winter 2006

Handing in Lab Assignments

Each new lab assignment will be made available by Wednesday morning through the class home page. An electronic copy of the lab will be due the following Wednesday at midnight. To turn in the lab, log in to the UCI Electronic Educational Environment, and upload the requested files following the link you should have for the ICS.H22 class.

Each .java file must include a comment template at the top. This comment should have the following form:

// NAME: Your full name
// STUDENT ID: Your UCI student ID
Use the following ID for each submission: your UCI ID number '_HW' homework number '_S' submission number (starting with 1). E.G., 12345678_HW3_S1. Only your highest numbered submission will be considered for grading although all copies will be checked for plagerism. Please only submit the .java source code files (not your .class files or .vep files or any other files generated by the compiler).

Grading of Lab Assignments

No late lab or homework assignments will be accepted. For this reason, I strongly recommend that you get started on your homework assignment early in order to avoid unexpected delays. In particular, you should read through the lab assignment on the day that it is given and make sure that you understand the instructions.

Each program you submit (on homework, quiz, or the final exam) will be graded on the following components: Program Design, Algorithmic Correctness, Coding Style, Efficiency. You should review each assignment after it is returned to make sure that you understand the reason for any deducted points and can improve your performance accordingly.

Programming Environment

You are free to select any programming environment of your choice. Many people like to use the command-line compiler javac and virutal machine java . This is what Minh will use in grading and testing your code. The machines in the lab all come equipped with TextPad and by default, use the compiler that comes with Sun Java 2 Standard Edition SDK.

Working in the lab is a good idea since help is more readily available there. However, many of you may want to work on your programming assignments from home. You are responisble for installing the necessary software on your own machines. It is not realistic to expect us to provide support for your home installations. Here is the software you will need to get started:

For more on setting up Java on your home machine, see Prof. Alex Thorntons web page Setting Up Java On Your Home Machine .

Many people also like to use an integrated development environment (IDE). These provide an editor, compiler, virtual machine and usually other tools, such as a debugger. A relatively easy one to get started with is BlueJ. BlueJ is available on all the machines in the labs and can be downloaded for free from www.bluej.org . There is a very good tutorial available at that web site as well. I will be using BlueJ when presenting and writing code in class.

Java Coding Style Rules

The following are the coding style rules that we will be using for this class. You may lose some points in your lab assignments if your code does not adhere to these rules.

Examples of Class Definitions

     import java.awt.*;

     /*
         class Triangle defines a two dimmensional Triangle
     */

     class Triangle
     {

         // the x,y coordinates of the origin of this Triangle

         private int x, y;

         // draws this Triangle on the display

         public void draw()
         {
            // ...
         }

         // inverts this Triangle along a horizontal line

         public void flip()
         {
            // ...
         }

         // rotates this Triangle by number of degrees specified by angle

         public void rotate( int angle )
         {
            // ...
         }

     }