CSC148H: Introduction to Computer Science // Winter 2012

Overview

Velian vpandeli@cs.toronto.edu Office: BA 4261 Hours: T 10-11:30, R 2-3:30

Paul pgries@cdf.toronto.edu Office: BA 4234 Hours: M 11-12:30, W 3-4:30

Welcome to the course webpage for the Winter 2012 term of CSC148H, an Introduction to Computer Science. This course teaches the basics of computer science in Python, which is an industrial-strength programming language used at companies like Google and Industrial Light and Magic.

The course is delivered through 2 lecture hours a week plus at least eight 2-hour closed labs.

Outside of class and lab, you will also complete a set of 4 smallish exercises, 2 larger assignments, 2 midterm tests, and a final exam. The marking scheme and rough course schedule are available on the course information sheet.

There is no required text. All required readings will be posted on the Lectures page.

The instructors are Velian Pandeliev and Paul Gries. Paul is the course coordinator, which means he deals with a lot of the administrative stuff (TA management, lab scheduling, marks management, and so on).

Please come visit our office hours! Some of the best learning takes place there. You're encouraged to visit both Paul and Velian regardless of your lecture section. The office hours start at 10 minutes past the hour.

Quickstart guide

To get set up for the course, check out the CSC148H Quickstart Guide.

Getting help

Have questions? Here's where to ask them.

Source	Description
Discussion board: Piazza	Need clarification on a handout? Wondering about a lab? Have a Python style question? These are all excellent topics to post on the CSC148H Piazza discussion board because they will probably be useful to other students. Piazza is a little different than a regular discussion board. Each question has two possible responses: a student-edited one and and instructor-edited one. You can answer each other's questions. More fun: anyone can edit any answer. That means that you can add helpful information such as an example, and you can clean up grammatical and spelling errors. You can also ask private questions that are only visible to the instructors. Feel free to use this instead of email if you like -- we will be checking Piazza about as frequently as we check email.
Office hours	Office hours are where you can ask anything you like: get help related to lecture material, go over your assignment, ask for help with your marks. You don't need an appointment to attend these, you can just drop by.
Email	Use email to ask your instructor a personal question. Use a descriptive subject line that includes "148". Here is an example: "148: issue with my partner on assignment 1".
Help Centre	The Department of Computer Science has an Undergraduate CS Course Help Centre with TAs who are able to help you with first year courses (as well as most second-year and some third-year courses). It's open Monday to Thursday from 4-6pm and is located in BA2270. Go visit them if you need help!