COMP1010 Notices

Check your grades and your e-mail

Posted by Sim Mautner Sunday 14 May 2023, 01:33:04 PM.

Hi everyone,

Please check your grades. Especially look for where it seems that you submitted some work but it was not marked. E-mail me if you have this situation.

Also, there are 2 students whose exam submissions didn't go through correctly. Please check your e-mail to see if you are one of those 2 students.

Regards,

Sim.

Lab Total Released

Posted by Sim Mautner Sunday 07 May 2023, 05:59:52 PM.

Hi everyone,

You can now access your lab grade via your Grades page. It is out of 20.

The calculation goes like this:

• For each lab, add the auto and manual marks, divide by the number of marks required for that week, multiply by 2, take the minimum of the mark achieved and 2.
• Then, add all the weeks together to get a mark out of 18 (since each week was set to 2% in the end, but then there were only 9 labs).
• Divide by 18, multiply by 20, to get a mark out of 20.

Please let me know if you think there's been a mistake in the calculation of your lab mark.

Cheers,

Sim.

Exam Arrangements (for those who can't attend in person on 10th May)

Posted by Sim Mautner Tuesday 02 May 2023, 02:40:40 PM.

Hi everyone,

The school is expressing a strong preference for everyone to sit the exam in person.

As such, I am still exploring options for students who enrolled in COMP1010 under the impression that the exam would be online (and are not able to attend an in person exam on 10th of May). One of the options being explored is to offer an in person exam sometime in the first two weeks of term 2.

Please contact me (cs1010@cse.unsw.edu.au) and let me know whether or not you will be back on campus for term 2.

Regards,

Sim.

How and when to submit Feedback Task

Posted by Sim Mautner Thursday 20 April 2023, 10:18:16 PM.

Hi everyone,

The feedback task is due by 10pm on Saturday night 22nd April.

If you're comfortable including your feedback task in your Gitlab account, please ignore the rest of this notice.

Please submit it via the course website here: Feedback Task by following the "Make Submission" tab at the top of the page.

If you haven't submitted this way before, I made a video about how to submit the implementation this way, just follow the same instructions, but go to the Feedback part of the project. How to Submit my Implementation

I have also uploaded this video to Echo360 for anyone who can't access YouTube.

Cheers,

Sim.

How to submit your Implementation

Posted by Sim Mautner Thursday 20 April 2023, 06:41:27 PM.

Hi everyone,

Sorry for the confusion regarding how to submit your implementation.

If you have your code in Gitlab, you may ignore this notice.

If you have had any trouble with Gitlab, here is a video with instructions for a quick and easy way to submit your implementation: How to Submit my Implementation

I will also upload this video to Echo360 for anyone who can't access YouTube.

Cheers,

Sim.

More Information Regarding Project Due Friday and the Exam

Posted by Sim Mautner Monday 17 April 2023, 04:35:56 PM.

In today's lecture we covered some information about the Demonstration and Feedback project tasks, and some information about the exam. If you weren't in the lecture, please watch the lectures found here (project) and here (exam) as soon as possible, to leave time to ask any questions you may have.

End of Week 9 Update

Posted by Maddy Guthridge Saturday 15 April 2023, 01:23:37 AM.

Hey everyone! We're up to the final stretch of term 🎉. There are a couple of big announcements, so make sure you read this entire notice.

Project demonstrations and feedback

On Friday next week, you will be demonstrating your major project. I'm so excited to see the awesome apps you've created!

• Tutor availabilities have been finalised, and can be found on this spreadsheet . Closer to the day, we will also add Zoom links to the spreadsheet, which will be where you will do your demonstrations.
• If you haven't already, make sure you choose a time slot using this form . You must be available for the full hour around your chosen time.
• Make sure to read the document on the demonstration task so you know what is required of you.

You will also be asked to give feedback on two other students' projects.

• You will need to watch their demonstrations and provide them both positive and constructive feedback on their work.
• You should do this while they present - you will not be given access to a recording of their demonstration.
• To make sure you know what is required of you, please read the document on the feedback task .

Exam information

I'm excited to announce that our exam will be both open-book and open-internet . On the exam day, you'll be able to bring your laptop to the exam room and complete your work on that.

• While the exam is open internet, it should be treated as a read-only resource - you will not be permitted to post questions, except to course staff through official channels.
• You will be expected to cite your sources if you use any code that isn't yours. You can do this by adding comments containing links to the resources you used, and the license you used them under (eg Creative Commons) . You may want to practice this in your work leading up to the exam. An example of a correct citation is as follows:

# https://stackoverflow.com/q/8318911/6335363 
# Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0

If you are unable to make it to the in-person exam due to being out of Sydney on the day of the exam, stay tuned for another announcement on what to do in the next few days.

MyExperience survey

This course has undergone a lot of changes this term, so we'd MASSIVELY APPRECIATE all the feedback you can give us. Please fill out the MyExperience survey to let us know what you thought about the course. In particular, we want to know:

• What parts of the course did you like the most? We'll make sure we do more of those things in future terms.
• What parts of the course did you find the most frustrating? We'll try to come up with ways to improve them. If you have any ideas on how we could make things better, make sure you share those as well!
• What parts of the course content did you think were the most useful? We'll make sure to keep covering those bits.
• What parts of the course content did you think were useless/irrelevant? We want to spend as much time as possible teaching you all the skills and tools you need to create awesome web apps, so if there are things that didn't seem helpful to you, we may want to spend more time focusing on other things instead.
• What parts of the course content did you find the easiest? We might be able to teach more awesome things if we spend a little less time on the easy bits.
• What parts of the course content did you find the most difficult? We may need to simplify those parts and make them more approachable.

Thanks so much in advance for your feedback! We want to make the course as amazing, engaging and fun as we can, and your feedback will be instrumental in ensuring we can do that!

Help sessions

I'll be running a help session tomorrow (Saturday) from 1-3 PM. There will also be additional help sessions on Tuesday and Thursday. Have a look at the consultations page on WebCMS for more information about these!

Lab solutions

The solutions for lab 5 and 7 have been released! You can find them here . If you have any questions about them, feel free to post on the forum where we'll be happy to help you out!

Lecture code

Due to a minor technical difficulty, the latest lecture code is available here , rather than on EdStem.

Thanks!

Thanks so much for your time, and best of luck with the final polishing for your projects! Since this was such a long announcement, I think it's only fair that I provide a few extra doggies. Make sure to view the announcement in your browser if you can't see them.

End of Week 8 Update

Posted by Maddy Guthridge Friday 07 April 2023, 10:30:02 PM.

Hey everyone! I hope you're all enjoying your long weekend so far! There are just a few announcements I have for the end of the week:

• The help session on Saturday is going ahead as usual from 1-3 PM. I'll put a link to it on the WebCMS page right before it starts. Feel free to join for help with your labs or projects! I'll be happy to help as much as I can!
• The due date for lab 8 has been moved to Tuesday the 11th at 5 PM to account for the public holiday on Monday.
• Remember to post on the forum if you have any questions! We're very happy to help out!

Enjoy your weekend! Remember to take the time to look after your mental health. Spend time with friends and family, watch your comfort movie of choice, and enjoy this Bruno ( open the notice in your browser if you can't see him).

Thanks!
Miguel

Exam Accomodations

Posted by Sim Mautner Thursday 06 April 2023, 10:48:18 AM.

If you are concerned about your ability to sit the COMP1010 exam in person at UNSW on the 10th of May 2023, please fill out this form: https://forms.gle/QyXjnC2j2rSQK5c77

This will help us make the necessary accomodations.

Cheers,

Sim.

P.S. Sorry if you've e-mailed me separately. Collecting the information like this will help me figure out a plan.

Public Holiday on Monday - Catch up lecture tomorrow

Posted by Sim Mautner Wednesday 05 April 2023, 10:00:56 AM.

Hi everyone,

Just a reminder that Monday is a public holiday so there's no lecture. Instead I'm going to do an extra lecture tomorrow 10am-12pm. Please attend if you can, otherwise recordings will be uploaded as usual.

Cheers,

Sim.

End of week 7 update

Posted by Maddy Guthridge Saturday 01 April 2023, 12:07:20 AM.

Hey everyone! Congrats on making it to the end of week 7!

There are just a few announcements I'd like to make:

• My help session tomorrow has been moved to 4-6 PM. If you have any questions about labs or the project, I'd love to help you out! I'll add a link on the course's consultations page about 10 minutes before it starts.
• Solutions have been released for lab 3 and lab 4 . If you struggled with any of the exercises for them, definitely take a look!

Great job again, everyone! Have a happy Sally as a reward for reading this announcement:

If the image fails, to load, try viewing the notice in your web browser.

Thanks again,
Miguel

Project Proposal Results Released

Posted by Rani Jiang 🤯 Friday 24 March 2023, 08:17:50 PM, last modified Saturday 25 March 2023, 12:24:34 PM.

Hello everyone! Most students can now view their 🐨 project proposal marks and feedbacks through give 🐨.

Note that some tutors are still finalising marking . If you cannot find your marks please wait till the coming Monday morning before emailing them. If you have any concerns or queries about marking please send an email or talk to your tutor directly .

I'd also highly recommend the upcoming ✨ Saturday 1-3pm help session ✨ with Miguel for extra advice on either the project or labs. You can find the full timetable for those sessions here and we also recommend the forum as an alternative great place to ask questions 😊

Please have a cat coding to motivate your serotonin producing nerve cells.

Have a lovely remainder of flexibility week.

~Rani

End of week 5 update

Posted by Maddy Guthridge Friday 17 March 2023, 07:47:49 PM, last modified Saturday 18 March 2023, 01:05:05 PM.

Hey everyone! 🎉 HUGE CONGRATS 🎉 on getting to the end of week 5! We're half-way through the term and all excited for a restful flexi-week! There are just a few things I'd like to mention:

• Your project proposal is due tomorrow ( Saturday the 18th) at 10 PM . There is a submission form available at this link .
• I'll be running a help session tomorrow from 1-3 PM - during that time, I'll be happy to help out with lab work, project proposals, or anything else course-related! You can join the Zoom meeting here .
• If you haven't gotten your lab 4 marked yet, either join the help session (linked above) or create a private post on the forum, and we'll mark your work.
• If you've sent a message to the course email recently and we didn't reply, send it again! There was a bug in our email server which meant that your email or our reply might have been silently tossed into the void rather than landing in our inbox. Sorry if this has caused any stress for anyone!
• Lab 5 isn't due until the Monday of week 7. HOWEVER, I'd still recommend giving it a go sooner rather than later. Don't forget that you can always post on the forum or join a help session if you have any questions!

Congratulations again for making it half-way through the term! It's not an easy course, but it's been inspiring seeing how everyone has risen to the challenge!Have a happy Brixy as your reward:

If the image failed to load, try viewing the post in your web browser .

Thanks for sticking with us,
Miguel

Week 4 H14A Tutorial - Substitute Tutor

Posted by Rani Jiang 🤯 Thursday 09 March 2023, 12:42:07 PM, last modified Thursday 09 March 2023, 12:42:36 PM.

If you're part of the Thursday 2-5pm class, please note that Simon will be substituting for Rani as the tutor. Please direct any project proposal or lab questions their way.

The zoom link to join the class remains the same i.e. https://unsw.zoom.us/j/86544035999 . However, note due to permission issues there is a chance this tutorial may NOT be recorded.

Lab 3 Feedback

Posted by Sim Mautner Wednesday 08 March 2023, 10:09:27 AM.

Hi everyone,

We have received feedback about Lab 3 being too "hard". Perhaps this is because of the questions being too challenging, and perhaps it's because the questions were not clear enough. If you have further ideas/feedback around this, please let us know so that we can improve the labs as efficiently as possible.

I'm working with Miguel now to improve the lab, with the plan being to improve the lab, and give you all another go at it.

Thank you for all your feedback and patience - we are making a lot of improvements to the labs this term, and this kind of feedback really helps us better facilitate your learning.

Cheers,

Sim.

Week 4 Update

Posted by Maddy Guthridge Tuesday 07 March 2023, 03:27:16 AM, last modified Tuesday 07 March 2023, 03:29:23 AM.

Hi everyone!

This is a quick update on a few things, particularly with labs. There are few important things here, so make sure you read everything:

• Reruns have not been done yet for anything past week 2 . I'll try and get this sorted as soon as I can -- I've just been super busy with other things, sorry for the delays.
• Auto-marks have been released for Lab 3 . Make sure you review these, as you may need to resubmit for a rerun, as explained below.
• The auto-marker outputs have been tidied up so it'll be much easier to interpret differences, particularly for multi-line strings. If you were confused about anything from lab 2, these improvements were added there too! If you have any other suggestions to improve it, feel free to post on the forum !
• By request, tutorial solutions will now be released at the start of the week rather than at the end! You should be able to see on the tutorials and labs page that tutorial 4 and its solutions are both released now!
• Lab 4 has also been released!
• Solutions for lab 1 have been released as well!

Lab 3 misunderstandings

It looks like there were a few misunderstandings in the week 3 lab exercises. Here are the biggest ones:

• In the create_song() function, you need to create a data structure representing a song based on the parameters given to the function. You are not supposed to call the input() function , as doing so will cause the auto-tests to fail (since we don't provide a text input).
• Also in create_song(), once you create the data structure, you need to return it . Not returning it causes the auto-tests to fail (since we can't give the song to any of your other functions unless you return it).
• In display_song(), you need to return a string containing the song information. You are not supposed to print the song information , as the auto-tests don't capture text output in this lab.
• In all the other functions, you need to retu rn some information , as otherwise the auto-tests can't capture any changes you make to the data structures. Refer to each function's docstring (the triple-quoted string right beneath its def -inition) for information on what it should return.

What to do if you made a mistake in your lab

It's ok if you misunderstood the lab and made one of the mistakes above (or some other mistake) -- there were quite a few places where we should have added more emphasis to important instructions, and written more checks in the starter code to warn you if you had misunderstood the tasks. We'll be changing the lab to fix this in future terms, and we'll make sure future labs this term are more clear about what you need to do.

If you think you made a mistake with lab 3, here's what you should do to fix it:

1. Find the mistake : we've improved the auto-marker to give more helpful information for the most common mistakes in lab 3, so checking your outputs will help you find any mistakes. If you're struggling to interpret the outputs, that's ok! Just ask your tutor, or post on the forum and we'll be happy to explain them and give suggestions for how to fix the issues.
2. Fix the mistake : make the changes so that your code code works correctly. Change as little as possible, as bigger changes will generally result in bigger resubmission penalties.
3. Resubmit your work : you can upload it to the resubmissions form and we'll reassess it as soon as we can. Depending on the nature of the changes, we might give a small marking penalty, but given the poor signposting of the issues above, we'll be as lenient as possible .

Regardless of how you went in the lab, we're super proud of you! It was a challenging task, and it was great to see so many people make such a strong attempt at it!

Thanks!

Thanks so much for bearing with us as we work to improve the course! Here's a happy Brixy as your reward for reading this message:

If the image doesn't load in your emails, open it up on WebCMS.

Thanks again,
Miguel

End of week 2 update

Posted by Maddy Guthridge Friday 24 February 2023, 10:16:23 PM.

Hey all!

It turns out that not everyone is getting emails for the announcements I've done on EdStem, so we'll be making them here from now on.

Here are some new announcements for everyone:

• Submissions for lab 2 are now open. You can submit your work using this form .

If you didn't see the EdStem announcements, here's a quick catch-up:

• Lab 1 marks have been released. You can access them using Give at this link . Note that the results don't include resubmissions yet.
• You can also access the automarker output from Give from the same link. For information on how to interpret the output, have a read of this forum post .

As always, if you have any questions, don't hesitate to post on the forum , and we'll get back to you as soon as we can!

Have a happy Bruno as your reward for reading this post:

Welcome to COMP1010

Posted by Sim Mautner Friday 10 February 2023, 01:08:58 PM.

Hi everyone,

Welcome to COMP1010, The Art of Computing for term 1 2023! First of all, I'm posting this notice to introduce myself. I'm Sim, the lecturer for the course. I enjoy lecturing and computer programming. Your feedback helps me do my job well, so please don't feel shy to speak up about anything that's going well in the course, or things which could be done better.

Also, I apologise for my delay getting the website up and running for this term and making information available to you. You'll see more content appearing on the website over the coming days.

Course Website

If you're reading this in an email, you can access the course website by clicking here . You may wish to bookmark it. Over the coming days you'll see content appearing on it such as:

• Course Outline (including policies, assessment information, and some resources you might find useful throughout the course)
• Timetable - the time and days of the lectures and tutorials
• Online Classes - the links to attend lectures and tutorials
• Course Work - lecture material for week 1 and tutorial and lab work for weeks 1 and 2

If you can't access the lecture, tutorial or lab material, please contact me via cs1010@cse.unsw.edu.au. Include your name and zid in your e-mail.

First Lecture

Our first lecture is on Monday at 10am. You can join it (and all other lectures) via this link: Lecture Zoom Link (bookmark it!)

Other Action Items

• Join the course forum via this link . This is where you can ask questions (publicly or privately) about the course.
• Save the date for project demonstrations. This will be on the 21st of April (Friday of week 10) . Each student will be required to attend for 1 hour of the day, so I recommend keeping at least a couple hours free at this point. (Accomodations can be made for students who have previous commitments such as work. Please contact me as early as possible if this is your situation.)

Any Questions?

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me. For now, if you reply to this welcome notice on the course website, I'll see it, and in the first lecture you'll learn more about the best way(s) to contact me.

Regards,

Sim.