COMP1010 Notices

Student Exam Notes

Posted by Sim Mautner Tuesday 12 May 2026, 12:02:49 PM.

Hi everyone,

I've now updated the student notes which will be provided to you during the exam. Please familiarise yourself with the layout. You'll be able to open this folder in a VSCode window and search for an individual file (labelled with your zid), search within your specific file, and search within the whole folder if you wish.

Latest Student Exam Notes

See you all tomorrow :)

Sim.

Upcoming final exam

Posted by Maddy Guthridge Monday 11 May 2026, 08:59:19 PM.

Hey all! Our final exam is on Wednesday afternoon. I hope your study is going well!

• Time: Wednesday May 13th, 1:45 PM . Please get there at least 15 minutes early.
• Location: M15 Building (the same location as our practice exam)
• For specifics, please refer to: the CSE exam allocations website .

What to bring

• Your written notes (2x double-sided sheets of A4 paper). These will be collected at the end of the exam, so if you want to keep a copy, you'll need to create that copy beforehand.
• Pens and pencils. You will be required to use them as a part of the exam.
• A clear water bottle, which contains water.
• A bag, so that you can store any materials that you cannot take into the exam (especially electronic devices such as laptops and phones).
• A physical form of photo ID.
  • Preferably, this should be your UNSW student ID.
  • Australian driver's licenses and international passports are also accepted.
  • These alternate forms of ID are only accepted in CSE lab exams , so if your UNSW student ID has expired or is missing, you should replace it as soon as possible.

What to expect

• This is a lab exam, meaning you will be expected to complete short-answer and practical programming tasks on lab computers.
• You will need to memorise your zID and password in order to log into the exam system.
• If you didn't attend the in-person practice exam, here is a video tour of exam environment: https://youtu.be/v_5qYfa_WM8
• The style of the exam will be very similar to the many practice exams we have released.

During the exam

• Sim, some of our tutors and I will be there to provide moral support and supervise.
• If anything goes wrong, please get the attention of a supervisor. We will be able to help with any technical issues.
• If you don't tell us about issues during the exam, we cannot help you afterwards.
• UNSW has a fit-to-sit policy , so if you are feeling unwell before the exam, please do not attend, or you will be unable to apply for special consideration. If you begin to feel unwell during the exam, you should tell us as soon as possible so we can help.

Best of luck with your study, and we'll see you on the day! If you've got any questions at all, please ask on the forum.

Maddy

More practice exams for your perusal

Posted by Maddy Guthridge Saturday 02 May 2026, 08:20:49 PM.

Hi all!

We have released a few more practice exams. You can download them from this page .

For all those people who attended our in-person practice exam, we've unfortunately had some issues with emailing you your work, since they get filtered by UNSW's spam filtering. If you'd like a copy of your work, please post privately on the forum, where I can upload your work as a reply.

If you've got any questions about the exam, please post on the forum, and we will be happy to help!

How to find the practice exam room

Posted by Maddy Guthridge Tuesday 28 April 2026, 01:11:47 PM.

Coincidentally, the actual exam will be in the same place in a few weeks, so take note!

Step 1: Rupert Myers Building (M15)

Step 2: take elevator to level 5

Step 3: Walk down the hallway until you find the Pipa lab (that is where we are hanging out today)

Reminder: MyExperience!!

Posted by Sim Mautner Friday 24 April 2026, 06:37:55 PM.

Please fill it out if you haven't already. It's available via Moodle.

Trouble Submitting? Help is available.

Posted by Sim Mautner Thursday 23 April 2026, 06:34:23 PM.

Hi everyone,

If you're having trouble submitting your code, I'm online on the Zoom lecture link intermittently this evening. If you come on, if I'm there, I can help you straight away, otherwise leave your Zoom open and I'll say hi when I get back and can help you with any submission problems.

Cheers,

Sim.

Practice exams are released!

Posted by Maddy Guthridge Wednesday 22 April 2026, 02:52:31 AM.

Hi all!

I am happy to announce that we have released three practice exams for you to try out, with another one releasing in a few days!

You can find them on WebCMS on the Practice Exams page.

Currently, the starter code folders from these practice exams are missing a pyproject.toml file. You'll need to copy one across from a lab or tutorial exercise, then run uv sync as per usual. The starter code will be updated to fix this soon.

Sim's Consultation Availability

Posted by Sim Mautner Thursday 16 April 2026, 06:45:01 PM.

Hi everyone,

I'm really enjoying seeing your projects coming together!

With Project Implementations due next Thursday night, I'm available for some additional Zoom consultations in the coming week.

In booking consultations, please be considerate of my time and that of your peers. Book the time(s) you need, but if you change your mind about attending, please cancel your booking as soon as possible so that the booking slot opens up for other people.

Please make bookings through my booking page .

If you'd like to make a consultation at a time which is not listed on my booking page, you may reach out to me via email at s.mautner@unsw.edu.au. Let me know your availability and I'll see what I can do.

Regards,

Sim.

Solution to the end-of-lecture bug

Posted by Sim Mautner Tuesday 14 April 2026, 06:54:28 PM.

Hi everyone,

For those of you who are still wondering what was wrong with the code at the end of our lecture - I've now released to you fixed code, and an extra folder in our lecture code folder from today, named "Solving the end of lecture bug". The screenshots show the debugging output which helped me find the problem, and a screenshot of the changed code. Although we were careful to update the correct letter in "answer" in our initial implementation, when we fixed our code to do "greens first - then yellows" we forgot to change the correct letter in the answer.

Eg:

answer: DEVOTE

guess: WITTED

Looking at 'T', we were updating them to be:

DE.VOTE and WI,TED

rather than

DEVO.E and WI,TED

Note that the fixed version removes the 'T' from 'DEVOTE' rather than removing the 3rd letter.

See you all on Thursday :)

Lecture Content for the Rest of the Term - Have Your Say

Posted by Sim Mautner Tuesday 07 April 2026, 01:21:23 PM.

Hi everyone,

At this point in the term we adjust the lecture content to the specific wants and needs of the current cohort of students.

1. Remembering that "Programming" is worth 25% of the Implementation mark, we are looking for students to submit their code to us for teaching purposes.
   • If you've finished your MVP and maybe 1-2 NTHs.
   • Email your code to cs1010@cse.unsw.edu.au with the subject line 'Code for programming improvement lecture'.
   • I will review your code to see if it's more suited for:
     • Individual feedback on your programming or
     • Use it as a demonstration to the class about how they can take their existing implementation and improve their programming in order to maximise their marks for that component.
2. As many of you will be debugging your projects in the coming weeks, we are looking for students to submit their code to us for teaching purposes.
   • If you have a bug which you've tried to solve or a feature you can't get to work.
   • Email your code to cs1010@cse.unsw.edu.au with the subject line 'Code for debugging demonstration lecture'.
   • I will review your code, and if it's suitable, I will use it as a demonstration on how to debug your specific problem or how to get your specific feature to work.

We will accept email submissions for the above 2 areas right up until Wednesday/Thursday of week 10. Please also submit this poll to indicate what would interest you the most if we have lecture time that's not otherwise occupied.

Practice Exam Opportunity

Posted by Sim Mautner Thursday 02 April 2026, 05:45:26 PM.

Date: Tuesday of Week 11 (Tuesday 28th April)
Time: 1pm-6pm (come for as little or as much as you'd like)
Location: Pipa Lab M15 550 - Lute Lab M15 530

A practice exam will be provided in the exam environment.

This is a great opportunity to:

• Get familiar with the exam environment (the computers, keyboards, rooms that the exam is being run)
• Try your hand at questions similar to those which will be in the final exam

Consultation today

Posted by Sim Mautner Thursday 02 April 2026, 11:00:09 AM.

Hi everyone,

Consultation will be held today at 1pm in the same room as our 11am-1pm lecture. I'll also be available over Zoom.

If you'll be coming, but arriving late, please let me know by emailing s.mautner@unsw.edu.au.

Cheers,

Sim.

Ruban's Tutorial and Lab Today - New Location: Quad G048

Posted by Sim Mautner Wednesday 01 April 2026, 10:26:33 AM.

Ruban is ill today. If you usually attend Ruban's class, go instead to Quad G048 where you will join Maddie's class for today. (Also at 12pm-3pm.)

Announcements - project update and extra videos

Posted by Sim Mautner Tuesday 31 March 2026, 10:34:34 AM.

1. Your proposals are still in the process of being marked. I am hopeful that you will receive your raw mark (not including any late penalties) and your feedback via email by the end of today so that you can discuss any feedback with your tutor in your labs this week and make any required adjustments to your project.
2. Please check out the videos which have been added to the bottom of Lectures v2 (between weeks 5 and 7). They include:
   • If you are still getting your head around the topics in week 7: Revision of Cookies, JSON and API files
   • If you haven't completed your own solution to the Restaurant Finder question posed at the end of the Complex Data Structures topic in week 3: Restaurant Finder Solution Walkthrough <-- You will need this for the week 8 lab.

Lecture Video Uploads - previously not working

Posted by Sim Mautner Friday 13 March 2026, 12:54:39 PM.

Hi,

Word reached me that one of the lecture videos from Tuesday may not have been uploaded properly. I've double-checked and they seem to be fine now. Please let me know under the 'Lectures' category of the forum if there's still a problem. Please include the name or link of the video that's not working.

Have a wonderful weekend!
Sim.

Web App code provided in lectures should now work

Posted by Sim Mautner Tuesday 10 March 2026, 07:09:11 PM.

Hi,

If you download the latest zip files for the lecture code (both starter and filled in) you'll find a file called 'pyproject.toml'. This should make the files work. Might need to run 'uv sync' and restart Visual Studio Code. In your tutorials this week your tutor will check that you're able to get your code working.

Cheers,

Sim.

Additional Content (and Help)

Posted by Sim Mautner Tuesday 10 March 2026, 10:30:29 AM.

I'm releasing some additional videos from last year.

Please use these to support your learning.

You do not need to be confident in these areas yet, but I recommend practicing regularly as building competence takes time. You have until about week 7 to build fluency.

Lecture Code and Recordings

Posted by Sim Mautner Tuesday 17 February 2026, 01:22:11 PM.

Hi everyone,

Thanks for a great first lecture.

From now on I will post the recording of each lecture in this YouTube Video Playlist . As I do this, I warn you - stay up to date with the lectures!! These recordings are provided to ensure equal access to learning materials (eg for students who may fall sick for a day or have responsibilities in their life which may restrict their access to lectures), or for your use in revising the course content. For the majority of you, if you use these recordings as a justification for missing lectures, you will fall behind and will not end up passing the course.

The code I wrote in the lecture will be uploaded following the lecture, on the Lectures page, under the relevant week number.

I look forward to continuing our adventure into Python with you all on Thursday.

Cheers,
Sim.

Welcome to COMP1010

Posted by Sim Mautner Sunday 15 February 2026, 12:14:22 PM, last modified Sunday 15 February 2026, 12:16:32 PM.

Hello everyone,

Welcome to COMP1010!! I'm Sim and I'll be your lecturer this term. We also have a great team of tutors who you'll meet at least one of in your first tutorial this week.

Some Websites and Links to Bookmark

• Course Website : This website will have all the information you need for COMP1010 this term. It includes lecture notes, code, live lecture link, recordings, announcements, assignment due dates, and is where you submit your assignments.
• Course Forum : This is where you can ask questions either publicly (if another student may have the answer, or if your question being answered may help other students) or privately (for private and personal matters so only yourself and the course staff will see the exchange). You can also use this to share with other students any course notes you make or cool resources you may find.
• Live Lecture Link : This is the link to the Zoom meeting where all our lectures will be streamed. Anyone watching will be able to ask questions and get answers in real-time. The lecture will be recorded and uploaded to YouTube (the link will be available in the top section of this page sometime shortly after the first lecture).

Our First Lecture

• Our lectures will be held:
  • First lecture of the term is on Tuesday 16th February.
  • Tuesdays 11am-1pm in Old Main Building G31 (K-K15-G31)
  • Thursdays 11am-1pm in Science & Engineering G07 (K-E8-G07)

• For more information about what content will be covered in our first lecture, keep an eye on the Lectures page. More content will be released over the coming days.

Getting Your Computer Ready For COMP1010

Where possible, we recommend getting your computer set up for COMP1010 before the first lecture, or at least before your first lab. Here's how you do that:

1. Watch and follow the steps shown in these videos (choose the one which matches your computer):
   • Walkthrough: MacOS
   • Walkthrough: Windows
2. Do the Get Set activity.
   1. Create a folder on your computer for COMP1010, and inside that create 3 folders: lectures, tutorials and labs.
   2. Click this link, and save the provided file in your 'labs' folder.
   3. 🚀 Get set
   4. Unzip the saved file, and follow the instructions in the README.md file.

That's all for now. If you have any questions you can ask on the forum or approach me before or after the lecture on Tuesday. I look forward to meeting you all and seeing what web apps you make this term.

Cheers,
Sim Mautner.