St Andrews Computer Science

*Mike*

Also if anyone(in their first year) needs any help with java i would be happy to help :smile:

Thanks,
Mike

I think I've thrown all of my papers away, but I'll give you the jist of one of the CS1004 practicals that I can remember :smile:

Basically, it involved a 'card game', where the players are around a circular table. For number of players n, there are n-1 cards, dealt at random between the players. Some may get three or four cards, some may well have none at all. The idea of this 'game' is that any player with two or more cards in their hand must pass one card to their left and one card to their right. Your job in this practical is to write up the code for such a program...

It really just wants a text output for each turn of the game, but it'll stop automatically if it reaches 1000 turns...Let's say there are 10 players and the 9 cards are dealt as follows:

2 1 0 0 3 2 0 0 0 1

The game would process this as follows:

2 1 0 0 3 2 0 0 0 1
0 2 0 1 2 1 1 0 0 2
2 0 1 2 0 2 1 0 1 0
0 1 2 0 2 0 2 0 1 1
0 2 0 2 0 2 0 1 1 1
1 0 2 0 2 0 1 1 1 1
1 1 0 2 0 1 1 1 1 1
1 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 1

That's the program you're to make for something like Week 6 in CS1004. Week 7's practical then asks you to modify your program from Week 6 to add some new functions to it (I can't remember any offhand, though)

Note: Although I THINK I got that example right, there may be a mistake...it took me three attempts to write it up ending with nine 1s - I kept getting eight before :redface:

University of St Andrews

Reply 2

Thanks

Took 35 mins :p:

Hi mike,

We have only been given the praticals for the first two weeks so far, and quite frankly, they are easy. They are currently introductory and are mainly aimed at getting students famililer (probably a spelling misstake there) with what software the uni uses and how to upload our work etc.

So at the moment, i am not sure if anyone can give you any work that might challange your java skills yet.

Reply 4

cookums

Practicals for the first three weeks are really easy. It gets more difficult round about week 4 or 5, though :wink:

That holds true for most subjects, so you'd be best to remember it :smile:

Reply 5

cookums

Dalimyr

Practicals for the first three weeks are really easy. It gets more difficult round about week 4 or 5, though :wink:

That holds true for most subjects, so you'd be best to remember it :smile:

Yeah i know, i can carry on wishing that they stay this easy though :p:

Reply 6

Aye, to be honest I don't think I've learned anything yet. And I've never used Java before.

Reply 7

cookums

Im just curious, but how many people on the course have already done programming before they came?

If you have any problems with future asignments feel free to PM me :smile:

Reply 8

cookums

*Mike*

Im just curious, but how many people on the course have already done programming before they came?

Erm, not sure exactly, we did do a show of hands in the first lecture but that was a week ago and i didn't exactly note it down :p:

i think it was about half-and half with even less having experience with java, only a handful of people such as myself, so i can't put an exact number on it, but yea, about half.

Reply 9

*Mike*

Im just curious, but how many people on the course have already done programming before they came?

If you have any problems with future asignments feel free to PM me :smile:

The majority will have programming experience...it's just that they won't all have done Java programming before - a lot of schools teach Basic since it's piss-easy.

Reply 10

Only 3 people said they had programmed in java before, about 1/3 put there hand up in the "have programmed elsewhere before" bracket which I'm in.

Reply 11

Madmanjock

Only 3 people said they had programmed in java before, about 1/3 put there hand up in the "have programmed elsewhere before" bracket which I'm in.

only 3 :O Im gonna have a huge advantage next year :cool:

especially since i intend to complete most of the exercises before starting :biggrin:

Reply 12

cookums

i swear it was more than 3, i swear i counted more than two others, apart from myself :confused:

Reply 13

Cool, my username and password still work :smile:

I can still access the StudRes in the CompSci department :rofl:

Mike, remind me in December and I'll pass on all of the practicals for you (or you can get them one by one as they're released - myself or one of the current compskis can do that for you) if you want to do them before you're off to uni :biggrin:

Reply 14

cloudofcalm

Wouldn't that be, well, you know, pointless? The first year is an introductory year, for everyone. If you complete the exercises, you'll be doing the same practicals and stuff, you'll just be even more bored.

Reply 15

Dalimyr

Cool, my username and password still work :smile:

I can still access the StudRes in the CompSci department :rofl:

Thanks, hope i dont forget :p:

Reply 16

cloudofcalm

Nah, then i can sleep through the first year Comp Sci and concentrate on the other subjects :smile:

Reply 17

Don't supposed you could give me some of those practicals to do as well? Maybe I can "batch process" them over a weekend :p:

Reply 18

Yup, I can vouch for that (having resat Internet Programming last year)...the actual classwork would be "new" to Mike, so he wouldn't be bored of that (whereas I had to listen to all the same stuff a second time, which included listening to the same old jokes a second time :rolleyes:

). Practicals aren't really discussed in lectures - he can do the practicals at his leisure, knowing already how to do them and how to get them to work :smile:

Doing them now means that he can spend the hours fiddling around perfecting them now, then spend minutes rehashing them when he's doing them for the practicals next year (he can then spend his extra free time next year boozing up in the union or doing the second-year practicals :ninja:

)

Lucky bastard :tongue:

*goes back to programming random rubbish in DarkBasic and Visual Basic*
:biggrin:

Reply 19