CS-345 3T3RA (2974) and CS-780 3T3RA (2975)

There is a discussion forum for asking and answering questions about DK and Handel-C hosted by the Department of Computing at Imperial College of London. Students and faculty from around the world use this as the place to go to offer and receive help using the language and hardware we use in our course. I encourage you to take advantage of it!

• Handel-C Discussion Forum

If you are using Firefox as your browser, you will see an orange icon in the lower right corner of your browser window, which indicates that the forum provides an RSS feed. You can click on that icon to bookmark the forum, with the option to put the link in your bookmark toolbar. That way, you can always quickly check what's happening on the forum just by clicking on the link in your toolbar. And/or, you can install the Sage extension for Firefox, which you can configure to check for updates and to provide a list of links to them in your Firefox sidebar.

Due Date	Assignment	Solution
December 23	Final Project Due. Presentations will be from 11:00 and 1:00 in SB room A-205. This is your "final exam," and you must attend the entire session.
November 16	Laboratory V.
November 4	Exam.
November 2	Laboratory IV.
October 14	Laboratory III.
September 28	Laboratory II. Study the first four chapters of the Handel-C Language Reference Manual.	Code Listings
September 14	Laboratory I. You should consult the Handel-C Language Reference Manual and the PAL API Reference Manual while working on this assignment. Copies of these PDF files are accessible from the Manuals Web Page listed in the Administrivia section below.	Sample report and code. You should look these over to get an idea of what is expected for the lab assignments.
Immediately	Send an email message to me with the subject line CS-345 Mailing List capitalized and spaced exactly like that. Put your name and 4-digit student ID number in the message body. This message will be used to add your email address to the mailing list for the course. You may repeat this assignment multiple times if you would like to have more than one address in the mailing list and/or if you change your address. Be sure the subject line is exactly as specified, or your mail will get eaten by my spam filter!	When I receive your email, I will reply with a message that includes instructions for accessing the restricted parts of the course material, including solutions to laboratory assignments.

Writing proper lab reports is an important part of the course requirements. Click here for instructions on preparing and submitting laboratory reports (PDF document).

Programming in Handel-C is unlike programming in software languages in many ways. But you still need to make it easy for readers to navigate through your code and to understand it easily. Click here for some rules to follow that should help make your code more readable.

1. Class Meetings

   The class meets Tuesdays and Thursdays from 3:05 to 4:20 in SB B-141 with the following exceptions:

   • There will be no class on Thursday, September 16 because the college will be closed for the Rosh Hashanah holiday.
   • There will be no class on Thursday, October 7. We will make up this missed class by extending the other class meetings of the term by three minutes each.
   • The college will follow a Thursday class schedule on Tuesday, November 16. But that won't affect us because our class meets on both Tuesdays and Thursdays.
   • Tuesday December 14 follows a Wednesday schedule at the college. Our last class meeting therefore will be Thursday, December 9.
   • The final exam is scheduled for Thursday December 23 from 11:00 to 1:00. Contact the Registrar's Office immediately if this time conflicts with another exam. You will give a 15 minute presentation of your final project to the class at this time; there will be no actual final exam.
   • After the first class, we will generally meet in the laboratory, SB A-227.
   • You may also use the computers in SB A-205 to work on your assignments outside of the normally scheduled times. (Use the ones that are named for trees.) Also, if you have broadband access to the internet from off campus, you may access any of the computers in A-227 and/or A-205 using Windows' remote desktop application.

     Be sure you log off from any laboratory computer before you disconnect a remote desktop session or leave one of the laboratory rooms. Failure to do so will reduce your course grade by 5 points for each occurrence.

2. Textbook

   There is no textbook for the course, but you will be using several manuals and tutorials, which are available online as PDF files.

   • Manuals
   • Celoxica Tutorial (1.2 MB).

     This tutorial is a 330 page slide show used by Celoxica for a commercial course they offer. Access to it is restricted to students taking this course, and it may only be used for academic purposes.

3. Office Hours

   My office is SB A-222, and my office hours will be Tuesdays and Thursdays from 4:30 to 5:30. But the best way to do office hour business is usually by email: vickery##babbage.cs.qc.edu. (Change ## to an at sign.)

4. Grades

   There will be approximately 5 required laboratory assignments, which will each count 5% of the course grade. They will be graded on the form and content of the written laboratory report, how well the code adheres to the coding guidelines for the course, and how well the project functions, in that order of importance.

   The midterm exam will count 25% of the course grade.

   The final project will count the remaining 50% of the course grade. It will be graded using the same criteria as the laboratory assignments, except 15% of the project grade will be based on your presentation to the class on December 23.