CS 334: Introduction Assignment

We'll be using Piazza, which is a site for managing student questions and answers within a course. If you've got a question about an assignment or content in the class, send it to the course Piazza site; it has a really cool wiki-like system for allowing students (and me) to answer questions. I've used it many times, and it works great. You should feel free to answer questions as you can to help other people; it's lots of fun.

You'll need to enroll for Piazza. To do do, visit the course Moodle page, and click on "Piazza Questions and Answers." Once you get to Piazza, you'll see a question I've posed, for which you need to contribute towards the answer. Piazza is designed so that all students collaboratively edit a single answer, so you don't need to just add your content to the bottom; you might tweak what someone else has said in some way.

All questions about course content, assignments, and so on should go to Piazza. If you email me directly, I'll gently ask you to post to Piazza instead. Of course, you can always talk to me in person during office hours, and any communication of a personal nature (grades, etc) is welcome by email as well.

What to turn in: Contribute to the answer to the Piazza question I posed.

For some assignments this term, we'll be using the open-source database system PostgreSQL (generally spoken out loud as "postgres."). Over break, you should have received a password for PostgreSQL by email from Mike Tie. See him immediately if you don't have such a password. Then make sure that your password actually works: you won't need it for the first few assignments, but let's all just solve those pesky login problems now.

PostgreSQL is installed on the department computer named thacker. You can connect to thacker via a terminal window from any department computer by typing ssh thacker. (If you're connecting remotely from a non-lab computer, you'll likely need to use the longer form ssh username@thacker.mathcs.carleton.edu.)

After you've gotten into thacker, type psql to start up the SQL interface to PostgreSQL. You should be prompted for a password: enter the password you received from Mike Tie. If it doesn't work, you'll get a password authentication error: visit Mike Tie for help. If it works, you'll see a psql prompt. Celebrate, then logout of psql and then thacker by pressing ctrl-d twice.

What to turn in: In the submission box in Moodle for this assignment, tell me that you've successfully logged into psql by saying something like "I have successfully logged into thacker and started psql."

We'll have a mixture of pair assignments and individual assignments throughout the course. I'll be pairing students up to work together in the near future. Working with partners is a great experience, and you learn a lot from each other. I would further encourage people to work in pairs in order to make grading more manageable. That all said, if you really don't want to work in a pair for those assignments, you may opt out. There's a Moodle text submission box associated with this assignment; tell me in that box if you wish to work alone. Otherwise, I'll assume that you wish to work with a partner. If you have a particular partner that you wish to work with, you can specify that person here as well. Of course, I can't grant all requests, as I may end up with conflicting suggestions or other complications.

What to turn in: In the submission box in Moodle, tell me if you have preferences on who you wish to work with. You can also indicate that you have no particular preferences. You can also say that you want to work alone, though I'd discourage that. If you don't have a preference either way (paired or individual), tell me that too; that helps if I end up with an odd number of people who want partners.

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