- Apr. 14, 2019: lab6 deadline glitch
- Sorry folks, botched the lab6 submission deadlines this weekend.
They've been reset to 6pm monday
- Apr. 10, 2019: office hours during exams
- I'll have office hours
- Tuesday Apr 16th 11-1
- Wednesday Apr 17th 12:30-2:30
- The final exam is Tuesday the 23rd, 9-noon in the gym
(note the university is closed the 19th-22nd over easter)
- Apr. 8, 2019: lab6 deadline reminder, lab 5 solutions
- Just a reminder that lab 6 is due this Friday (the 12th) at 5pm.
- A sample solution for lab 5 has been added to the solutions page.
- Apr. 4, 2019: extra lab6 notes
- I've expanded the lab 6 notes,
with additional explanation/examples for regular expressions and algorithm complexity.
- Mar. 31, 2019: Grammars for C and C code for bit manipulation
- I've posted some short C programs showing
how to manipulate bit patterns in C
- I've also posted links for lex/yacc grammars for C.
Note that the style is slightly different than the prolog DCG syntax we looked at,
in that the : is used instead of --> and the | is used instead of ;
yacc-based grammar for C (context-free-grammars + some added-on code)
lex-based grammar for tokenizing C (regular-expressions + some added-on code)
- Mar. 27, 2019: Lab 4 sample solutions posted
- The lab solutions page has been updated to
include a sample solution for the lisp lab (4)
- Mar. 26, 2019: Lisp/prolog practice
- I've updated the exams page to include
some suggested programming practice for lisp and prolog.
- Mar. 21, 2019: Putty update
- Hi folks, just passing this along from Merlin:
If you or any of your students use PuTTY on Windows, please update to the latest
version (0.71) as soon as conveniently possible.
The official web site: https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/
A number of bugs and exploits have been found and fixed via the EU bug bounty
program. If you are interested in some details:
https://thehackernews.com/2019/03/putty-software-hacking.html
- Mar. 16, 2019: Lab 5 (prolog) repository updates
- Just a note in case anyone has done an early grab of the lab 5 repository:
I've added a test script (tester.pl) to the repository and updated
the files to correct a contradiction in the expected function behaviour.
Copies of the updated files are also available here:
lab 5 files
- Mar. 15, 2019: Practice discussion questions
- I've also posted a batch of practice discussion
questions (essay-style questions) that would be good practice for the final exam.
- Mar. 14, 2019: Practice final (happy Pi day!)
- I've posted two practice final exams: version 1,
version 2.
Note that many of the questions involve crossover between a couple of topics,
for example in practice final 1:
Q1 is marie + prolog + fetch-decode-execute
Q2 is digital logic + regular expressions
Q3 is two's complement + finite state machines
Q4 is marie + lisp.
Q5 is lisp and complexity theory.
Q6 is just prolog.
We'll be starting the prolog material in lectures Mar. 19th as well as in lab 5, and
will be starting the theory material (regular expressions, finite state machines,
complexity) in lectures on April 2nd as well as in lab 6.
- Mar. 12, 2019: Midterm and lab 3 solutions
- I've posted midterm sample solutions
and a lab 3 sample solution,
I'll give the midterms and labs back today ... remind me :-)
- Feb. 25, 2019: Final exam time/location announced
- Our final exam has been set for Tuesday April 23rd, from 9am to noon, in the gym.
- Feb. 22, 2019: Digital circuit practice
- I've added a few more practice questions with
digital circuits to use prepping for the midterm.
- Feb. 19, 2019: Midterm reminder and office hours during study week
- Just a reminder that the midterm will be Tuesday March 5th, and will cover everything
covered up to/including this Friday's lecture and the labs up to and including
lab 3 (Marie).
- During the study week my office hours will be Tuesday and Friday, 11am-1pm.
- Feb. 13, 2019: The post-snow plan...
- The plan after all the snow cancellations is:
- Lab 2 will be due at 5pm Friday the 15th
- Lab 3: we'll drop "part 2" of lab 3 (the bash scripting part)
and will cover the Marie (part 1) aspects in the labs of
Wed. Feb. 20th - it will be due Tuesday March 5th at 5pm.
- The midterm will be moved to Tuesday March 5th, and will
cover everything done before the break. We'll do a review
session for the midterm in the final class before the break
(Friday Feb. 22nd).
- Lecture material: the material on bash scripting will be moved
to the "additional topics if we have time" category. We'll
continue with Marie/assembly language when we resume on Friday (15th).
- I'll have extra office hours Friday the 15th 1:30-2:30 and
Tuesday the 19th 10:30-11:30.
- Feb. 11, 2019: Midterms, schedules, snow, etc
- Well, campus is now officially closed Tuesday as well
(good thing - we've got a foot of snow in our driveway and
it's still coming down hard).
Tuesday I'll post an official update, but I think what's going
to happen is as follows:
- we'll extend the submission deadline for lab 2
- we'll move the midterm to after the study break
- we'll drop the "bash scripting" content for this term
(I'll post a revised lab 3 and update the topic schedule)
- Jan. 30, 2018: lab submissions and logisim examples
- Don't forget, after you make your final changes to your labs, to
submit them you need to go to your lab directory and run the following commands:
git add .
git commit -m "...whatever message..."
git push
- I've also posted a few logisim circuits
if you want to continue experimenting with it (download and open them in logisim)
- Jan. 25, 2018: practice midterms
- A second (possibly tougher) practice midterm
has been posted.
- Jan. 24, 2018: Midterm prep, and final word on waitlists
- The midterm will be held in class
on Tuesday Feb. 19th. A practice midterm
has been posted, along with a copy of the
reference sheet you'll be given with the exam.
- With respect to the waitlists, we are still (over)full, and unfortunately are now
past the point where we can add any students to the course even if someone else
now drops the course. If you didn't get in, I strongly recommend contacting
the department advisor (Huizhu.Liu@viu.ca) to plan your courses for next year.
- Jan. 14, 2018: VIU Computer Planned Outage: Jan 19/20
- VIU computer systems (including all labs, servers, and email) will be unavailable this
coming weekend (Jan. 19/20). This means you will not be able to connect to our
servers to work on labs this weekend, and any email sent to VIU addresses over the
weekend might be lost.
- Jan. 5, 2018: Waitlists and labs
- Unfortunately, it looks like we'll still have a pretty substantial waitlist for
both sections after the pre-req checks are completed. I've got a limited ability
to expand the section sizes (we can fit up to 18 in each lab section, rather
than 16) and will do so after the waitlist period ends (Jan. 15).
- Note that labs will begin in the second week, i.e. Jan. 16th.
- Jan. 4, 2018: Preliminary announcement
- This page will be used throughout the semester as
the focal point for announcements about changes to
assignments, labs, exams, deadlines, class cancellations,
etc.
I recommend students check this page
a couple of times a week throughout the
semester.