Computer Science Courses
COMP1110
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Your lecturer, tutors, and your peers are all important resource:
As your lecturer, I will do my best to help you succeed in thiscourse. However, it's up to you to make the most of what I have tooffer. You can do this at least four ways:
Your tutors are experts and are here to help you. Make the most ofthis by attending and engaging in your scheduled labs.
The course tutors are as follows:
Engage with your class mates and group members. Use the forums.If you don't understand something, ask others. Explaining somethingto one of your peers will help deepen your understanding.
This course does not make use of a prescribed text book. Rather, Irecommend that you consider the five textbooks below (one of which isfree), and the resources, and decide whichof these are the best match for your needs. You are not required topurchase any book.
This book is comprehensive and highly regarded. I cross-reference it heavily from the lecture notes.
The great thing about this book is that it is freely available. However, it is slightly outdated, only covering up to Java 2 (we're studying Java 7). One or two important concepts are not covered in this version of the book, but it remains an excellent resource.
This book is very popular and covers the material well, and does so in a very approachable style. I highly recommend you consider this book. I cross-reference the book heavily in my lecture notes. I could not find a paper copy, but instead purchased the ebook from the Co-op.
This book is absolutely outstanding, but is not required. It takes you well beyond the material covered in this course. However, if you're interested in doing more Java, I highly recommend that you buy this book sooner rather than later.
The topics covered in this course is the subject of a large amountof online material, some of which is high quality. I encourage you toread widely, use diverse resources, and adopt a learning style thatsuits you.
Waterloo University has made available a for understanding the basics of Java. This tool allows youto paste in basic Java programs and watch them execute step-by-step.It illustrates the underlying data structures and allows you to stepbackwards and forwards in time. I highly recommend that you use thistool to help you understand what is going on when a Java programexecutes.
Oracle has developed a rich set of Java . I will use the trail as part of the rapid introduction to Java in the first few lectures of the course. We cover a lot of ground at the start of the course, so you may find it helpful to work through the tutorials in your own time. You may also find the larger set tutorials useful beyond the first few weeks; they are generally well designed and thorough. (Note that the tutorial is not relevant to this course because we are using Java FX, which replaces Swing.)
is one ofmany online resources for troubleshooting technical problems.Questions like one are typical. You'll find great answers to more questions too. You should become proficient at using such resourcesfor resolving troublesome problems. Whatever your problem, there's afair chance someone else has encountered it, and that another personhas written up an explanation and/or solution. Learning how to usesuch tools effectively (and ultimately contributing to them!) is anessential skill for a software developer.
Oracle has also produced some good Java FX . You may find the tutorials on , and useful. The tutorials include a and detailed example of a tree animation, which is worth reading even if you don't follow it all. These tutorials are not as mature as Oracle's Java tutorials, but they are nonetheless a very useful reference. I recommend you use them.
Successful completion of this course will require mastery of basicIntelliJ and GitLab/git skills, the two main tools we will use. Not alot of class time will be devoted to teaching you these -- you areexpected to learn these tools yourselves. Fortunately there are somevery good online resources to help you with each of these. Irecommend you use them.
IntelliJ is a large and powerful commercial IDE. We use the open source 'community edition'. JetBrains has extensive , including (which I highly recommend). I strongly recommend you start with their introductory video which you can find on their main page. Their include a series on version control, which culminates with a video from within IntelliJ.
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