COMP1511 Notices

Notices

  • COMP1511 18s1

    Posted by John Shepherd Sunday 21 January 2018, 09:13:03 PM, last modified Sunday 21 January 2018, 09:13:44 PM.

    The web page for COMP1511 18s1 is located at

    https://webcms3.cse.unsw.edu.au/COMP1511/18s1

  • Final grades on myUNSW

    Posted by Andrew Bennett Tuesday 12 December 2017, 11:13:22 PM.

    Hi everybody,

    I hope you've been having a good break (and/or enjoying yourself in COMP2521 over the summer!).

    A few of you may have noticed a discrepancy between your mark on myUNSW and your mark on the WebCMS3 grades page, where either your mark is slightly higher on WebCMS3, or your mark is shown on WebCMS3 but is still withheld ("WD") on myUNSW.

    There were a few minor errors with marking that have been fixed since the final results were released (one sub-part of a theory exam question didn't have all of the marks uploaded, and a problem with the autotests for one of the lab exercises has been fixed), and so the final grade for a small number of affected students has increased by 1 mark.

    Additionally, marks were withheld for students who had not passed the hurdle(s), or who were potentially involved with plagiarism. I have marked all of the supp exams, and the marks for these are now reflected in your grade on WebCMS3. If you have not passed one or both of the hurdles, your grade may be "UF" -- "unsatisfactory fail", as you have not passed an essential course requirement (the hurdle exams).

    If your grade on WebCMS3 is still WD, this means that Andrew Taylor has not yet resolved your situation. If you have been contacted by Andrew Taylor about potential plagiarism and have responded but you still haven't heard back from him by tomorrow night (Wednesday night), send me an email and I can follow up with him.

    The grades have to be re-uploaded all at once from the CSE systems to myUNSW, and so the re-upload will start once all of the course results have been completely finalised -- hopefully this will have finished processing by the end of this week.

    If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to send me an email.

  • COMP1511 Final Course Marks

    Posted by Andrew Bennett Friday 01 December 2017, 10:08:05 PM.

    Hello everybody,

    Your final course mark is now available , via myUNSW or the grades page on the course website.

    Hopefully "final_grade" contains a mark >= 50 and a grade of PS, CR, DN or HD. If it does, you have met all hurdles and other requirements and have passed COMP1511 -- well done. COMP1511 hasn't been an easy course, and many of you have had to work very hard over the past months to get here.

    Particular congratulations to the top ten students in the course:

    Kevin Luxa
    Nanway Chen
    Philip Mai
    Conrad Martin
    Matthew Chen
    Mitchell Roberts
    Michaela Wong
    Bo Pang
    Declan Warn
    Hannah Easton

    On your grades page you can see information about how you've gone in various assessment tasks across the semester -- labs, milestones, assignments. You will soon (but not yet) be able to see information/feedback about your code and style for assignments 1 and 2 -- I'll have it there as soon as possible.

    If your "final_grade" field contains the grade "WD" , this means that your COMP1511 mark and grade is yet to be determined.

    The "grade_withheld_reason" field explains why your grade was withheld :

    - If the field says " hurdles ", this means that you have not yet passed the hurdle(s). See the information about supp exams below.

    - If the field says " plagiarism ", then your mark has been withheld due to concerns of potential plagiarism in work that you (or your group) submitted for an assignment this semester. You will (or may already have) receive an email from Andrew Taylor , who is handling the potential plagiarism cases in this course.

    The field "supp_exam_offered" has information about whether you are able to take a supp exam.

    If this contains the value " not applicable ", then you don't need to sit a supplementary exam -- you've already passed! (both the course, and the hurdles)

    If this contains the value " hurdle ", then you have a passing grade in the course (>=50), but have not yet passed one or both hurdles. You need to pass the hurdles in a supp exam in order to pass the course. Note that not all of the questions from last week's supp exam have been marked yet, and so this may still change (see your arrays_hurdle and lists_hurdle fields for details).

    If this contains the value " full supp ", then your course grade is currently between 40 and 50, *and* you have met the conditions in the course outline . You can sit a full supplementary exam (both the theory section, and the hurdles). If you pass (or have already passed) both hurdles, and you pass the theory exam, you will pass the course.

    If this contains the value " no ", then you have not met the conditions in the course outline to be offered a supplementary exam. If you were planning to take COMP courses over summer or next semester, you will need to change your enrollment. The CSE student office can provide advice.

    The supplementary exam is tentatively scheduled for 10:45am on Friday 8th December, in the J17 Level 3 labs. You will be emailed the exact details of time and location by the 6th of December.

    I hope you've enjoyed your time in COMP1511 this semester -- it's been a full-on semester, with a lot of hard work, but we've made it to the end.

    Good luck with your future studies, and I hope to see you around in further CSE courses :)

  • Second Chance Hurdle Supplementary Exam: tentatively Friday 8th December

    Posted by Andrew Bennett Thursday 30 November 2017, 12:08:06 AM, last modified Thursday 30 November 2017, 12:40:00 AM.

    Hi everybody,

    We will be running another hurdle supp exam, to give you another opportunity to pass the hurdle(s) if you have not yet passed them.

    This is tentatively scheduled for Friday the 8th of December ( not 6th of November, whoops ) -- the date/time are not yet confirmed , but I wanted to give you all as much notice as possible.

    You can find out whether you are eligible to sit the supp exam through your grades page or sturec.

    If your `arrays_hurdle` field says Y then you've passed the arrays hurdle -- well done! Your `arrays_supp` field should say N -- since you've passed the hurdle, you don't need to do anything more.

    If your `arrays_hurdle` field says N, then you have not yet passed the arrays hurdle . If your `arrays_supp` field says Y, then you are eligible to sit the supp exam. If your `arrays_supp` field says N, then unfortunately your final course mark is not high enough for you to pass the course, even if you passed the hurdle(s).

    If your `arrays_hurdle` field says ?, then your supp exam from the 21st has not yet been completely marked (and is in the process of being hand-marked). The ? will be changed into a Y or N as soon as it has been marked, and I'm working through these as quickly as possible.

    All of the above is the same for the `lists_hurdle` and `lists_supp`.

  • Seating for the Supplementary Hurdle Exam

    Posted by Andrew Bennett Monday 20 November 2017, 11:21:53 PM.

    Hi everybody,

    Here's a link to the seating for the exam: http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~cs1511/17s2/seating/supp.html

    Students who are sitting both the array and list hurdle questions will be in kora and sitar .

    Students who are sitting just one of the hurdles will be in: flute , oboe , bugle , and horn .

    You can see which hurdles you need to sit on your grades page.

    If there are any issues with your seating, or if you're not on the list but you expect to be, please email me, and cc jashank.jeremy@unsw.edu.au and cs1511@cse.unsw.edu.au . If you only email me, I may not see the email in time.

    Good luck with the supp tomorrow, I hope it goes well.

  • Supplementary Hurdle Exam

    Posted by Andrew Bennett Monday 20 November 2017, 01:37:33 PM.

    Hello everybody,

    As I said last week, there will be a supplementary exam for the hurdles on Tuesday 21st November, in the afternoon.

    The time and location have now been finalised:

    Students sitting both hurdles: bugle and horn 12:45-15:00

    Students sitting one hurdle: flute, oboe, sitar, kora 12:45-14:00

    Your grades page should now show both whether you have passed the hurdles, and whether you need to sit the supp exam:

    https://webcms3.cse.unsw.edu.au/COMP1511/17s2/users/grades

    I will send out the link to see your exact seat tonight.

  • Please check your groups (or your marks might be broken!)

    Posted by Andrew Bennett Saturday 18 November 2017, 10:28:26 PM.

    Hello everybody,

    Since many of the assessments this semester were done in groups, it's very important that we have your group members correctly recorded.

    If your group details are not recorded correctly in the system, you won't be able to receive marks for any assessments associated with those groups.

    I've put together a form that shows who was in each your groups throughout the semester (lab pairs, assignment 2 groups).

    It's very important that you have a look at it, and either confirm that your groups are correct, or provide the details of your correct team members.

    Please fill out the form here: https://cgi.cse.unsw.edu.au/~cs1511/17s2/groups/team.cgi/

  • Supplementary Hurdle Exam -- Tuesday 21st November

    Posted by Andrew Bennett Thursday 16 November 2017, 12:17:42 PM.

    Hello everybody,

    I hope your exams are going well.

    There will be a supplementary exam for the hurdles on Tuesday 21st November , in the afternoon.

    I will send out more details soon.

    We are still in the process of hand-marking the final prac exam submissions, and so your grades for prac1 and prac2 may still increase.

    There are two new fields on your grades page: "arrays_supp" and "lists_supp".

    If the value is "Y" , then you have failed that hurdle and need to take the supp exam in order to pass the course.

    If the value is "N", then you've passed that hurdle, and you don't need to take a supp exam for that hurdle.

    If the value is "?", then you may have passed the hurdle, pending on hand-marking for your code. This will be changed to a Y/N as soon as possible.

    If you've already passed the hurdle, you can't take the supp exam.

  • Good luck in the exam!

    Posted by Andrew Bennett Monday 06 November 2017, 12:36:49 AM.

    Hello everybody,

    Good luck in the exam tomorrow.

    I hope you find it a good exam -- I've done my best to make it as fair (and enjoyable) as possible.

    If you're in the afternoon session, don't forget to turn up *before* 12:30 -- if you're late, you can't sit the exam :(

    Make sure you read the exam instructions carefully, particularly in relation to the practical section and the hurdles.

    Here is the theory exam skeleton , and prac exam skeleton , so you can read the exam instructions ahead of time, and get a sense of what the questions will be like.

    If you're still awake when you get this email, I highly recommend putting your laptop/phone/computer away and going to sleep -- getting a good night's sleep will help a lot more than trying to cram last minute.

    I'll see you all tomorrow.

  • Practical Exam Skeleton

    Posted by Andrew Bennett Sunday 05 November 2017, 03:58:10 PM.

    Hello everybody,

    I've uploaded a skeleton of the Practical Exam component of tomorrow's exam.

    You can see it here .

    Please make sure you do read through it before the exam , as it has important information about how the practical exam will work, and how the hurdles will work etc.

  • Exam Information

    Posted by Andrew Bennett Saturday 04 November 2017, 10:53:47 PM.

    Hello everybody,

    A few more important pieces of information about the exam:

    1. Theory/Practical : The exam has both a theory and a practical component. The theory exam is first, with 10 minutes reading time + 90 minutes working time. This is then followed by the practical exam, which is 10 minutes reading time + 60 minutes working time.

    2. Hurdles : On your grades page, you can now see whether or not you have passed the arrays hurdle, and the linked lists hurdle. Passing the hurdle meant getting >= 5/10.

    You can see these under "arrays_hurdle" and "lists_hurdle", and they will be either "Y" for yes you've passed, or "N" for you haven't passed the hurdle yet.

    You can also see your marks for the arrays prac (best of week7 and week10), and linked lists prac (mark from week13). Note that marking for q3 from week 10 has not yet finished, and so your mark for the arrays prac could still go up.

    3. Hurdle Questions : In the final exam, there will be questions dedicated to the arrays/strings hurdle, and the linked lists hurdle. These questions both give you an opportunity to pass the hurdle , as well as an opportunity to increase your marks towards the 10% arrays/strings prac and 10% linked lists prac component of your final grade.

    If you have already passed the hurdle (5+/10), you do not need to do these questions. You can choose to do them if you want to (try to) improve your mark for that prac section.

    If you already have 10/10 on one (or both) of the hurdles, you do not need to do these questions. You cannot improve your mark (since it's already at 10/10) for arrays/strings or linked lists in the final exam.

    4. Other Prac Questions : In the practical component of the exam, there will also be other question(s) in addition to the hurdle sections. More details on this + the questions for the hurdle sections will be in the exam skeleton, which will be out ASAP.

  • What are you most proud of this semester?

    Posted by Andrew Bennett Friday 03 November 2017, 02:42:40 PM.

  • ​Exam FAQ + Marks + Last day to fill out the myExperience survey!

    Posted by Andrew Bennett Thursday 02 November 2017, 01:42:07 AM.

    Hello everybody,

    I've put together an FAQ for the exam , with information on exam topics, past papers, and the structure of the exam. Please have a read through it.

    I will also be releasing marks for as many assessments as possible over the next few days, so that going into the exam you have as much information as we can give you about your marks. By tonight, you should hopefully be able to see your marks for: labs, assignment 1 correctness, week 10 exam q1+q2.

    I will release the marks for week 10 q3, and the week 13 exam as soon as possible. I will put the marks up as I have them, so if your mark is still pending tomorrow, that means you didn't pass all of the tests so your code is being hand-marked.

    If nothing else, you will at least know before the final exam whether or not you have passed the hurdles.

    You have another chance to pass the hurdles in the final exam . If you don't pass them in the final exam, you can sit a supplementary exam to try again, and if you still don't pass, I'll keep running supplementary exams until you do (or until I'm not allowed to run any more).

    I've written a tutorial/walkthrough on how to approach solving linked list questions , based around q2 from the linked lists prac exam. You can find it here.

    And finally: today (Thursday) is the last day to fill out the myExperience survey . If you haven't filled it out yet, I would really appreciate it if you did -- COMP1511 is a relatively new course (this is only the second time it's run) and your feedback is key to improving the course in the future.

    We'd like to hear what you think could be improved, but also what you think has gone well, and what you've liked about the course (so that we can make sure we keep the good bits in!).

    Even if you don't have much to say, you should still fill it out -- it will only take a few minutes at the most.

    You can find the myExperience survey here.

  • Peer Assessment form for Assignment 2

    Posted by Andrew Bennett Wednesday 01 November 2017, 07:48:02 PM.

    Hello everybody,

    I've set up a peer assessment form for assignment 2, where you can rate the contribution of your team members. People who don't contribute to the assignment don't share in the marks. People who are forced to do extra work because their team-mates coasted will receive consideration.

    Go to: https://cgi.cse.unsw.edu.au/~cs1511/17s2/assign2teams/team.cgi/ and login with your zID/zPass.

    This should produce a list of the members of your assignment team, and your A.I. pair.

    For each of the activities (Game.c, testGame.c, player.c) give each team member a rating of how much they contributed to that activity, and optionally type a comment to explain the rating.

    We expect everyone to do this. If you don't, your own participation rating will suffer.

    Let me know if there are any bugs in the interface, functionality, or data. The teams are drawn from the latest team lists on the WebCMS3 groups page.

  • Final exam seating

    Posted by Mei Cheng Whale Wednesday 01 November 2017, 07:01:31 PM.

    Final exam time and seat allocations available. Please take note.

  • Wednesday Week 13 lecture recording is now available

    Posted by Andrew Bennett Tuesday 31 October 2017, 04:20:26 PM.

    Hi there everyone,

    I'm sorry for the delay in putting the lecture recording up.

    It's now available in the usual places (the YouTube playlist, and in the lectures section).

    If you missed the lecture I highly recommend you watch at least the first part of the lecture : Prof. Richard Buckland gave a guest lecture, and it's very much worth watching.

  • Information about the final exam's theory section

    Posted by Andrew Bennett Tuesday 31 October 2017, 12:55:00 AM.

    Hello everybody,

    I've created a page about the theory section of the final exam . It has some sample previous exam papers, as well as some information on the format of questions. I will be releasing a skeleton exam within the next few days.

    In response to the most common question I've had about the exam thus far:

    How do I study for the theory exam? Are the lecture slides enough?

    I think the lecture slides / lecture material is a good start. I think also doing (or rather, having done) the labs during semester will be helpful too (I don't expect you to have done the challenges, but I do expect you've done all pair activities, and feel comfortable with the warmups).

    Also, keep in mind that you won't be assessed much (if at all) on things like "what does this word mean" or "define abstraction"; instead it will be things like "what's the bug in this code?", or "what does this code output?", or "write a short piece of code that does [something]".

  • ​The Final Card is Down!

    Posted by Andrew Bennett Monday 30 October 2017, 12:39:46 AM.

    Hello everybody,

    Congratulations on finishing the assignment!

    A blog template is available for the Assignment 2 Final Reflection. There is also a template for the final milestone, if you missed seeing it earlier.

    There won't be any late penalty for milestone/reflection submissions up until the end of next week (i.e. 7 days now).

    I will be releasing the results of the Week 7 and 10 exams, and sample questions for the final exam, as soon as possible.

    For now, go and get some sleep :)

  • It's the Final Card-Down! [Assignment 2 due tonight: 11:59:59pm]

    Posted by Andrew Bennett Sunday 29 October 2017, 05:04:39 PM.

    Hello everybody,

    I hope you're going well with the assignment.

    A few important things to note:

    1. MAKE SURE YOU TRY SUBMITTING YOUR CODE BEFORE THE DEADLINE!

    Hopefully you've been continuously working on your code, and submitting it to get feedback through SPOTS. But, if for some reason you haven't submitted it at all yet, please please please try submitting it well in advance of 11:59pm. Try submitting it right now, even -- even if your code doesn't compile, it should still let you know whether or not the submission worked (i.e. whether you're in a valid group, etc). Try this for both Game.c / testGame.c AND player.c. (Of course, if you've submitted it already and it's currently in SPOTS, you know that your submission is working, so you're all good.)

    If you email me at 11:55pm saying "help, I can't submit because it says I'm not in a valid group!", I won't be very sympathetic :(

    2. When submitting, only one person in your group/pair needs to submit the code, not all of you. In the submission system, the submission appears under your group/pair, not your zID, so whenever somebody in your group/pair submits, their submission becomes the latest submission for all of you.

    3. You will get marks for the assignment, even if your code doesn't completely work yet (or even if it doesn't compile).

    I completely understand that the amount of work and effort you put into the assignment isn't necessarily reflected in how correct your final submission is -- if you have a bug that you just can't track down, and fixing that bug would've made your code work substantially better, then you definitely don't deserve to get 0 marks.

    The number of tests you're currently passing/failing on SPOTS won't contribute directly to your mark -- SPOTS is only there to help you with debugging your code, and to give you some indication of how correct your game is, throughout the course of the assignment as everybody makes incremental improvements to their code.

    When we're doing the correctness marking of the assignment, we'll do some magic in terms of working out how correct your Game.c is, and how valid your testGame.c is, but if it turns out the answer is "not very", a human will look through your code, and assess by hand how close you were to having working code.

    But, regardless of anything else, I will make sure that your mark reflects the amount of work that's evident in the code you provide, even if it doesn't compile .

    4. We'll be running one final SPOTS round tonight, so make sure you get your code in for a final chance at some feedback before the deadline.

    Good luck!

  • Sorry for the sudden flood of emails....

    Posted by Andrew Bennett Sunday 29 October 2017, 12:17:19 AM.

    For some reason, WebCMS hadn't been able to send emails for the past few days.

    This meant that I (and the other tutors) may have missed your question on the forum -- I am very sorry about this. I'm going through the backlog now and answering the questions that haven't yet been answered.

    WebCMS is quite happily sending emails now... including all of the emails that hadn't been sent over the past few days.

  • Final Milestone: blog template is available

    Posted by Andrew Bennett Friday 27 October 2017, 11:26:46 PM.

    Hello everybody,

    I've put up a blog template for the final milestone, which you can find in the usual place. If you've forgotten how to use a blog template, there are instructions here .

  • Exam Skeleton for Week 13

    Posted by Andrew Bennett Friday 27 October 2017, 02:05:10 PM.

    The exam skeleton is available here: https://webcms3.cse.unsw.edu.au/COMP1511/17s2/resources/12996 . Apologies for the delay.

    There will be 2 questions in the exam, not 3. There will be autotests in the exam.

  • Final exam timeslots

    Posted by Andrew Bennett Thursday 26 October 2017, 01:27:27 AM.

    Hi there everybody,

    As you have probably noticed by now, we can't fit all 500 of you in the labs at once, and so we need to split our exams into two different sessions.

    For the final exam, these are a morning session (9am-12:35pm), and an afternoon session (12:20pm-4:10pm).

    If you have a preference for one specific timeslot, you can fill out [this form] .

    The exam time slots are:

    • Morning Exam 09:15-12:35 (incl Reading)
      • Seating/Reading: 09:15-09:30
      • Exam: 09:30-12:30 Students must not leave during exam .
      • Corralling/Leaving: 12:30-12:35
    • Afternoon Exam 12:20-16:10 (incl Corralling + Reading)
      • Corralling: 12:20-12:50 Plan to be early. Students arriving after 12:30 can't take the exam . Attendance taken.
      • Moving2lab: 12:50-12:55
      • Seating/Reading: 12:55-13:10
      • Exam: 13:10-16:10 Students allow to leave early.

    Initially, your preference is set to

    • the time slot which will not clash, if you have another exam on the same day
    • Either is fine, if you have no other exam on the same day. You have the opportunity to choose a timeslot with this form if there are seats available

    This form closes 5pm on Monday 30th October. Seating allocation will be released mid Study Week.

    Check your preference here . Email meicheng@cse.unsw.edu.au if you have further queries.

  • Prizes and excitement, happening in the Science Theatre now!

    Posted by Andrew Bennett Wednesday 25 October 2017, 04:07:45 PM.

  • Due date for Assignment 2: Sunday Week 13 11:59pm

    Posted by Andrew Bennett Wednesday 25 October 2017, 01:07:01 AM.

    Hello everybody,

    There has been a miscommunication about whether the due date for Assignment 2 would be Friday or Sunday -- my apologies.

    It came from the due date being "End of Week 13", but a misunderstanding between course staff about whether that was Friday or Sunday of Week 13.

    In the interest of giving you as much time to work on it as possible, the assignment will be due on Sunday night, at 11:59pm .

    Don't forget to submit your work as you go, so that you can get feedback from SPOTS.

  • SPOTS update: extra round; A.I. test program

    Posted by Andrew Bennett Wednesday 25 October 2017, 01:02:04 AM, last modified Wednesday 25 October 2017, 02:27:31 AM.

    Hello everybody,

    In anticipation of tomorrow's (Wednesday's) tournament, we will be running a SPOTS round at noon, to give you a chance for extra feedback etc before the lecture.

    We have also put together a program that plays a game of Final Card-Down with your A.I. running against itself, to help you speed up the debugging/improvement process.

    The output gives information about every move that happens in the game. Unfortunately the current output isn't in a format that's especially easy to read as a human; we're currently in the process of writing a more friendly output format, but wanted to give you access to it in the meantime. Th e output is now in a human-readable format!

    You can run it using the following command from the same directory as your player.c: 

    1511 testPlayer

    You can optionally provide it a seed for the game's random number generator, if you want to play the same game again (e.g. same card ordering etc) to debug a specific error.

  • SPOTS Inaccessible Last Night

    Posted by Curtis Millar Tuesday 24 October 2017, 08:21:27 AM, last modified Tuesday 24 October 2017, 08:35:36 AM.

    We would like to apologise for the fact that SPOTS was made unavailable last night and is currently inaccessible. SPOTS is now back online and you should be able to login and see your results from the latest round.

    The SPOTS server needed to undergo maintenance and upgrades last night. After these upgrades, you should find that the SPOTS interface is faster and more responsive.

  • Assignment 0: marks are out!

    Posted by Andrew Bennett Monday 23 October 2017, 11:59:09 PM.

    Hello everybody,

    Marks for assign0 are now out. Apologies for the delay in getting these back to you. You can view them, and feedback on your submission, by running `1511 classrun collect assign0` from a terminal, or from Give Online or WebCMS 3.

    Make sure you've reviewed the style feedback, in particular.

  • Final Card-Down: FAQ update, more rounds, A.I. tournament in Wednesday's lecture

    Posted by Andrew Bennett Sunday 22 October 2017, 01:15:31 AM.

    Hello everybody,

    More rounds : We will be running rounds of Final-Card Down every night this week, so that you have more opportunities for feedback before the assignment is due.

    Remember to submit early and submit often : even if your code isn't "finished", submit it to SPOTS (but make sure it compiles first!).

    To those of you who have been working on the assignment and submitting your work regularly -- well done. I've been keeping an eye on SPOTS, and it's great to see the progress you've been making.

    Concerningly, some groups haven't submitted anything yet..... if you're in one of those groups, make sure you do submit something ASAP. If you're stuck or having issues, you can email your tutor and/or ask on the forum for help.

    FAQ: The FAQ has had a significant update today. You should make sure you read through it , and if you still have any unanswered questions, post them on the forum.

    A.I. tournament : In the Wednesday lecture this week, we will be running a special tournament round of the Final Card-Down, with prizes for the winning AIs. This will not be the final A.I. round (since you still have until Sunday to perfect your strategies), but it will be an opportunity to show off your progress.

    If you haven't submitted an A.I. yet, you should start by submitting your drawBot.c code from the lab this week (even just the provided skeleton code is enough to have a functional A.I.), then slowly make improvements on it. Don't try to write the perfect A.I. before you submit anything -- you may very well find that you hit the end of semester with your "perfect A.I." *almost* ready, but still not working. It's far better to submit a basic A.I. to start with and then to make improvements on that, rather than aiming for perfection but ending up with nothing to show for it at the end.

    And, finally: you should make sure you come to Wednesday's lecture, even if you've been a bit slack in coming along to lectures recently -- we'll have a special guest lecture from Prof. Richard Buckland (which you won't want to miss), as well as the A.I. tournament , and prizes for the winning MandelbrArt entries , the best A.I.s, and a few other impressive things a few of you have done during the semester.

  • Friday Week 13 Exam - Seating

    Posted by Mei Cheng Whale Saturday 21 October 2017, 07:34:15 AM.

    The seating should be the same as Week 7 Exam except that the corralling in J17 G03 has been changed to K17 113.

    Check the Week 13 Exam Seating Allocations . For queries/problems email meicheng@unsw.edu.au


  • Week 13: Revision Topics + Prac Exam

    Posted by Andrew Bennett Friday 20 October 2017, 09:05:50 PM.

    Hello everybody,

    1. I've put together a poll for which topics you'd like to cover in the revision lecture on Monday. You can fill out the poll [here] and post other topics/questions/suggestions [here] .

    2. As you're hopefully aware, we have one final practical exam coming up on Friday next week (Week 13). This exam will be on linked lists, and we'll have lots of practice questions coming out soon.

    The seating for the exam will be the same as the Week 7 prac exam.

    If there are any issues with this, please email cs1511@cse.unsw.edu.au and we'll see what we can do.

  • ​Milestone 4 is here: due Wednesday 11:59pm

    Posted by Andrew Bennett Saturday 14 October 2017, 10:57:17 PM.

    Hello everybody,

    I've put a up a blog template for Milestone 4. You can use it just as you did with the other blog templates for other milestones etc. If you've forgotten how, there are instructions here .

    We've also put up a marking rubric for the milestones, which covers an overview of the skills we hope you will gain over the semester, as well as a rough guide to what we'd expect for each criteria. You can see it here .

  • ​MandelbrArt Voting is here!

    Posted by Andrew Bennett Friday 13 October 2017, 07:16:57 PM.

    Hello everybody,

    It's the moment you've all been waiting for: voting for your favourite entries in the MandelbrArt Gallery is finally here!

    You can view the page [here] or through the course website (on the sidebar).

    Since it would be totally impossible to just pick your one favourite, you can vote for as many entries as you want. The entry with the most votes overall will be the Grand Winner of the COMP1511 17s2 MandelbrArt Competition!

    If you visit the voting page again after you've already voted, you can see your previous votes: they will be pre-selected. You can change your vote if wish to: only your latest vote will be counted (and you can check what it is by visiting the form again).

    Voting will close at 11:59pm Sunday 22nd October (end of Week 12), and prizes will be awarded in the Week 13 lectures.

  • Game.c Plan Blog Template is now available!

    Posted by Andrew Bennett Wednesday 11 October 2017, 11:55:59 PM.

    Hi everybody,

    There is now a blog template available for you to write your plan for your Game.c -- the Game ADT implementation.

    There are instructions under the assignments section on the side menu, or you can click here .

    While there is no strict "due date" for the plan, it is essential that you complete the plan before you implement the ADT.

    If you've already started your implementation, that's great -- hopefully you've already been thinking about and discussing an informal plan with your group. You should formalise your plan in a blog post using the template.

    There are two sections to the planning blog: one that you should collaborate on as a group , and one that you should complete individually . Each group member must submit their own blog post.

  • Assignment 2: groups, submissions, SPOTS, update to Game.h

    Posted by Jashank Jeremy Tuesday 10 October 2017, 03:19:19 PM.

    I hope you are all having fun and working hard on Assignment 2.

    This is a reminder that, although the assignment is due on the last day of semester, you must submit your work regularly so that it can be tested with the SPOTS system. This is also a notification about an update to Game.h .

    Groups

    You need to make sure that you are in a 9-13 lab pair group as well as an Assignment 2 group.

    Please make sure that both groups have a unique name that reflects the members of the group. The names of your group should not be similar to Assignment 2 Group or Assignment 2 .

    Submissions

    Once you have ensured you are in a lab pair and assignment group, you should make sure you make a submission for testGame.c . The submission should compile, but it does not need to be correct or complete.

    You should then make sure you make a submission for Game.c . The submission should compile, but it doesn't need to be correct either.

    Any time you make a change to any of the three parts of the assignment, you should make a new submission via give . You should make sure that your code compiles properly and functions as you expect (although it does not need to be correct) whenever you make a new submission.

    You can make sure your code compiles properly by compiling your testGame.c , Game.c , and a Card.c that implements the provided Card.h . You can then run this to see if your implementation passes your own tests.

    SPOTS

    The SPOTS system will collect the latest submissions every Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday evening until the end of semester. Every testGame.c will be used to test every Game.c and you will be able to see which tests your implementation passed as well as which implementations your tests failed. You should check the results every Thursday, Saturday, and Monday.

    You can go to SPOTS using the Final Card-Down Live link in the WebCMS sidebar.

    If you failed a test, try and figure out what the error in your code may be. If you think the test is incorrect and you wrongly failed the test, make sure to blame the test. If your test was blamed , you need to determine if your test is actually incorrect, or if your test was wrongly blamed, in which case you may dispute the claim.

    This system is provided to assist in testing your code and for you to assist others. Making sure you work on your code regularly and keep your submission up to date will help you work towards having a correct implementation sooner.

    Remember that the testing system is only run three times a week, so you should check your implementation with your own tests as you work on it.

    Changes to Game.h

    A new function has been added to Game.h called topDiscard . 

    // Get the card that is on the top of the discard pile.
Card topDiscard(Game game);

    This function takes an instance of the game and returns a reference to the card on top of the discard pile. The card returned by the function should not be free d by the ADT user .

  • Week 10 Prac Exam Skeleton + Information

    Posted by Andrew Bennett Friday 06 October 2017, 04:56:28 AM.

    Hello everybody,

    I have created a "skeleton" of tomorrow's (Friday's) exam -- the exam paper (including instructions etc), but with the actual questions themselves removed.

    You can view it [here] . I highly recommend having a read through to familiarise yourself with the structure of the exam (number of questions, how to run autotests and submit them, etc), and to make sure you understand the exam instructions. The exam instructions have been expanded on since the Week 7 exam, so please do read them.

    A few things to note for tomorrow's exam:

    - If you're in the first session (3pm-4:30pm), you won't be allowed to leave until the exam is over.

    - If you're in the second session (4:20pm-6pm), you MUST arrive at (or before) 4:20pm. If you're not in the room at exactly 4:30pm, you won't be permitted to sit the exam.

    The only things you can bring with you into the exam are:

    - your student card
    - pens/pencils/etc
    - a clear water bottle (with no label)

    If you bring a phone, laptop, watches, or any other electronic devices you must turn them OFF and leave them in your bag.

    We will provide you with paper you can write/draw on during the exam.

    You can check your exam seating [here] : make sure you know where you're going so that you're not late! You can see a map of where the various CSE labs are [here] .

    The lab you'll be in for the exam is probably different to what's in your timetable. Follow the exam seating page, not your timetable.

    I've also had a few requests for clarification about how the marks will work for the Week 7 and Week 10 exams . Your final mark will be the better of the two marks you get for the Week 7 and Week 10 exam. So if you got 80% in Week 7 and 75% in tomorrow's exam, you'll get 80%. If you got 70% in Week 7 and 90% in tomorrow's exam, you'll get 90%. If you got 100% in Week 7, your grade will not go down.

    Good luck in the exam tomorrow.

  • Week 10 Exam#1 Seating Allocation

    Posted by Mei Cheng Whale Wednesday 04 October 2017, 09:07:20 AM.

    Please find your seat number and time for this Friday's exam (26th October).

    If you can't find your zID, it is likely that you have already received full marks in the week7 practice exam. If this is not the case or for any other seating problems email meicheng@unsw.edu.au

  • Trio, Duo, Uno... submit your assignment 2!

    Posted by Jashank Jeremy Tuesday 03 October 2017, 02:06:12 PM.

    There's been some questions coming in from groups who have already made their plans and have been working on writing their tests for the Game ADT about how to submit and get into the competitions.

    (If this isn't you, it should be. You should have a group, your initial plan should be complete, and you should at least be working on the first iterations of your testGame. This is an assignment where starting early, and working incrementally and consistently are critical to doing well. If you're uncertain about how to begin, please check out the resources, or ask your tutors. If you haven't yet started... start now! )

    Here's how submission will work for assignment 2.

    In your Lab Pairs (9-13) group, you'll be able to submit a player . This submission doesn't open until week 11.

    Your lab pair, and another lab pair, are also grouped together in an Assignment 2 group. Make sure you create this group on WebCMS 3; if you have had issues creating this group, please try again now. If you don't have a group yet, contact your tutor.

    In your Assignment 2 group, you'll be able to submit a testGame and a Game . testGame submission is now open. Game submission will open later.

    Competitions aren't quite ready yet; stay tuned for more details of that.

  • ​Assignment 2: Game.h updated to version 1.1.2 -- please download the new version

    Posted by Andrew Bennett Tuesday 03 October 2017, 01:49:23 AM.

    Hi everybody,

    We've made two noteworthy changes to Game.h:

    • Added a function called `gameWinner` to find out if the game has ended (and if so, who the winner was).
    • Renamed the `pastTurns` function to `numTurns`, to better reflect what it should do

    We've also clarified the circumstances in which the game can end, and what defines the end of a turn -- you can see these in the comments above `playMove` in Game.h, and on the main assignment page below "A game can end in one of the following ways:".

    Please make sure you download this new version ASAP, and take note of the changes.

    You can find it in the assignment section on the website, or by clicking here. If the page doesn't show v1.1.2 at the top of the Game.h file, try forcing a refresh of the page, or downloading the file directly.

  • ​Assignment 2: more resources + updated FAQ

    Posted by Andrew Bennett Tuesday 03 October 2017, 12:39:00 AM.

    Hi everybody,

    I hope you've had a good midsem break.

    I've added some more resources for assignment 2: an illustrated walkthrough of a game of Final Card-Down , with a very basic deck, as well as some sample code showing an example of how to construct a test for the ADT , for anyone who's still confused.

    I've also added a *lot* of information to the FAQ , which you should read through if you have any questions about how the game works, or how the ADT works, or what any of the words relating to the game ("turn", "move", "round" etc) mean.

    If your question isn't answered by the FAQ, please post it on the main assignment 2 page.

  • Assignment 2: Planning your testGame.c

    Posted by Andrew Bennett Friday 29 September 2017, 09:20:37 PM.

    Hi everybody,

    There is now a blog template available for you to write your plan for your testGame.c -- the Game ADT tests.

    There are instructions under the assignments section on the side menu, or you can click here .

    While there is no strict "due date" for the plan, it is essential that you complete the plan before you write the tests.

    Another plan will be released for the Game ADT implementation, and for the A.I. player, when those sections of the assignment are released in future weeks.

  • ​Final Exam: Monday 6th November

    Posted by Andrew Bennett Friday 29 September 2017, 06:00:15 PM.

    Hi everybody,

    As you may have seen, the exam timetable was released today.

    The exam for COMP1511 will be held on Monday 6th of November.

    Your exam timetable says "Please consult School for exam time and duration".

    This is because the exam will be held in the CSE labs, similar to the practical exams we've done so far; it also will have both a morning and afternoon session, since we can't fit all of you in the labs at one time.

    We will be releasing a form closer to the exam where you can state your preference for the morning/afternoon session. If you have another exam on that day for another subject, you'll definitely be put in the non-clashing timeslot, so that you can make it to both exams.

    The exam will have both theory and practical questions, and will be run in the "exam environment", as with the practical exams we've done so far, i.e. you won't have access to your own CSE account or files etc.

    We'll be releasing more information about the exam closer to the date; I just wanted to give you all a heads-up about what your exam timetable for COMP1511 actually means.

  • Friday Week 10 exam: timeslot swapping and details on exact times

    Posted by Andrew Bennett Thursday 28 September 2017, 04:25:34 PM.

    Hello everybody,

    I have some important information about the exact times for the Week 10 practical exam, which will again be on arrays and strings, in a similar format and difficulty etc to the Week 7 exam.

    • For students in the 15:00 - 16:30 timeslot
      • 15:00 - 15:15 Students wait outside lab room.
      • 15:15 - 16:30 Exam (incl reading). Students must not leave during exam .
      • 16:30 - 16:33 Students wait inside lab room, get ready to leave at 16:33.
    • For students in the 16:20 - 18:00 timeslot:
      • 16:20 - 16:40 Students assemble in a tutorial room. Students arriving after 16:30 cannot take exam . Attendance taken. No communication via mobile devices, laptops, carrier pidgeons, etc is permitted after 16:30.
      • 16:40 - 16:45 Students escorted to lab room.
      • 16:45 - 18:00 Exam (incl reading). Students allow to leave early.
      • Note that students in the 16:30 timeslot MUST arrive 10 minutes early, at 16:20.

    We have put together a form where you can update your timeslot preference for the exam .

    You can view it and fill it in here: https://cgi.cse.unsw.edu.au/~cs1511/17s2/seating/week10/register.cgi/

    I will be releasing more information in the days before the exam about the format/structure of the exam and questions.

  • Resources: help with structs and pointers; exam revision questions.

    Posted by Andrew Bennett Thursday 28 September 2017, 03:54:40 PM.

    Hi everyone,

    I've put together some diagrams/notes to explain how the Image ADT struct works. You might find this helpful if you've been struggling to get your head around how the image struct works, or if you're not feeling confident about allocating memory for a struct then allocating more memory for pointers inside the struct, or if you're confused about allocating memory for an e.g. `pixel ** array`. You can find it here .

    There will also be some more exam revision questions being released later today for the exam next week. You will be able to find them here .

  • Assignment 2 is here

    Posted by Andrew Bennett Wednesday 27 September 2017, 05:06:04 PM.

    Hello everybody,

    Assignment 2 is finally here!

    At this stage, you have to write tests for the Game ADT . We will progressively release the other two parts of the assignment: implementing the Game ADT, and writing an A.I. to play the game.

    You and your assignment group should begin on the assignment ASAP. If you are not yet in an assignment group, please contact your tutor * URGENTLY *, or you will be unable to complete the assignment.

    If you have any questions, please ask them in the comments of the assignment page.

    You can view the assignment here: https://webcms3.cse.unsw.edu.au/COMP1511/17s2/reso...

    Good luck!

  • Milestone 3 is here: due Sunday 11:59pm

    Posted by Andrew Bennett Tuesday 26 September 2017, 10:00:39 PM.

    Hello everybody,

    I've put a up a blog template for Milestone 3. You can use it just as you did with the Milestone 2 template and your Mandelbrot plan / final reflection. If you've forgotten how, there are instructions here .

    There will always be a blog template created for each of the milestones you have to write, and an announcement about when each milestone is due to remind you about it.

    We've also put up a marking rubric for the milestones, which covers an overview of the skills we hope you will gain over the semester, as well as a rough guide to what we'd expect for each criteria. You can see it here .

    I hope you're enjoying the mid-semester break.

  • Help Sessions running as usual during mid-semester break

    Posted by Mei Cheng Whale Monday 25 September 2017, 06:10:50 AM.

    Same locations and times. Please refer to the Help Sessions link .

  • Week 9 Lab

    Posted by Andrew Bennett Sunday 24 September 2017, 10:24:52 PM.

    Hi everyone,

    As next week is the mid-semester break, we've decided to extend the deadline for this week's lab (Week 9). We will be accepting submissions for this lab up until the end of the midsem break (Sun 1st Oct 23:59) with no late penalty.

    If you've already completed and submitted the lab: well done. If you haven't quite finished it yet, take advantage of this opportunity to spend some extra time on getting it working.

  • Mandelbrot Assignment: Final Reflection

    Posted by Andrew Bennett Monday 18 September 2017, 06:19:54 PM.

    Hi everybody,

    Sorry it took so long to get this up. There is now a blog template available for you to write your final reflection on how the assignment went for you.

    There are instructions under the assignments section on the side menu, or you can click here .

    This is due by Wednesday night (11:59pm).

    If you haven't finished the assignment yet, it's not too late -- late submissions lose 1% off the maximum possible mark per hour late, so a submission before Wednesday 2am could still get a passing grade.

  • Reminder: Mandelbrot is due today (Sunday 11:59pm)

    Posted by Andrew Bennett Sunday 17 September 2017, 01:28:09 AM.

    Hello everybody,

    I hope you've been enjoying the Mandelbrot assignment, and that you're making good progress (and maybe have even finished it by now).

    This is just a friendly reminder that the assignment is due today (Sunday 11:59pm), except for your "final reflection", which will be due on Wednesday 11:59pm. A blog template for this will be coming out later today.

    Don't forget to check out the MandelbrArt Gallery to admire the beauty you and your fellow students have created. It will automatically re-generate semi-regularly, so submit your tiles to the MandelbrArt activity from Week 8 to have your own tile on display.

    If you have any questions about the assignment, please post them on the forum rather than emailing me directly -- this way the other tutors can also help answer questions, rather than you relying on me for a response.

    Good luck; I can't wait to see your finished work.

  • The MandelbrArt Gallery is live!

    Posted by Andrew Bennett Friday 15 September 2017, 10:57:03 PM.

    Check out the amazing discoveries your classmates have made, and the beautiful tiles and color schemes they have created at [ the MandelbrArt Gallery ].

    To add your own piece of MandelbrArt to the gallery, submit your color scheme and coordinates to the [ mandelbrArt activity ].

  • Important information for Assignment 1

    Posted by Andrew Bennett Thursday 14 September 2017, 12:10:16 AM.

    Hi everybody,

    A few important things to note for the assignment.

    1. There was an issue with the javascript code which initially required the y axis to be flipped. This has now been fixed, and so you must modify your server.c code to pass in y, not -y :

    Change this: 

    center.re = x;
    center.im = -y; // change this line to not have -y
    drawMandelbrot(pixels, center, z);

    To instead be: 

    center.re = x;
    center.im = y;
    drawMandelbrot(pixels, center, z);

    Now your mandelbrot images will no longer be subtly upside-down :)

    2. There is an issue where sometimes your server will crash when scrolling quickly. To fix that, add the following code to the start of your main function in server.c: 

    signal(SIGPIPE, SIG_IGN);

    And add this #include up the top with the other #includes: 

    #include <signal.h>

    For more details, see here: https://webcms3.cse.unsw.edu.au/COMP1511/17s2/foru...

    3. There is an issue with running your Mandelbrot server on VLAB , where sometimes it won't be able to bind to the socket. It may also appear that your server suddenly is changing in drastic ways.

    To fix this, change the port in your server.c file to be something other than 1511.

    So, change this line: 

    #define DEFAULT_PORT 1511

    To something like: 

    #define DEFAULT_PORT 12345

    You can choose any number between 1024 and 65535, so try to pick an interesting number. You'll then need to access your server at http://localhost:12345 rather than http://localhost:1511.

    For more details, see here: https://webcms3.cse.unsw.edu.au/COMP1511/17s2/foru...

    Good luck with the assignment. I'm excited to see the discoveries you make and the beautiful images you create.

  • Practice Prac Exam 1 Results

    Posted by Andrew Bennett Tuesday 12 September 2017, 12:59:35 PM.

    Hello everybody,

    Your results for last Friday's exam are now out. You can view them through WebCMS, sturec, or however you usually view your marks.

    A remarkable 200 students achieved full marks -- well done! To those of you who didn't, don't worry: this was just a practice run, and you have another shot in Week 10, by which point you'll have (hopefully) had more practice and experience with programming and using arrays to solve problems.

    I've had several students ask why their mark was lower than they expected, given that they passed some of the autotests during the exam.

    The way that we did the automarking required you to pass all of the autotests for a given question in order to get marks for that question.

    The motivation behind this was that a lot of people had "accidentally correct" solutions -- where their code did something that was totally broken but just lucked into getting the answers right sometimes. Additionally, it means that a solution was required to be completely correct, rather than partially correct but missing a fundamental part of the requirements to fully solve the problem.

    Again, don't forget that this was just a "practice" exam, and so you also have the exam in Week 10, by which point you will hopefully have had a lot more practice and experience with using arrays to solve problems.

    Depending on how the Week 10 exam goes, we may award partial marks for partially correct solutions. This would require hand-marking partially correct solutions to ensure that marks are awarded for understanding and being able to use arrays, which seems more appropriate to do for the "real" exam rather than just the "practice" exam -- because hopefully many more students will get full marks.

    Let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

  • Issue with Mandelbrot Viewer code -- don't use DOCTYPE

    Posted by Andrew Bennett Tuesday 12 September 2017, 01:18:54 AM.

    Hi all,

    For some reason, the HTML code we gave you to load the Mandelbrot viewer has broken. If your Mandelbrot viewer just gave you a black page despite loading the tiles from the server, this should fix it.

    To fix it, simply remove the <!DOCTYPE html> part, i.e. instead of this: 

    <!DOCTYPE html> <script src="http://almondbread.cse.unsw.edu.au/tiles.js"></script>

    Just use this: 

    <script src="http://almondbread.cse.unsw.edu.au/tiles.js"></script>

    We're not entirely sure what happened -- it was working previously, but all of a sudden stopped working for some reason....

    Good luck with your assignment, I'm looking forward to seeing the fantastic images you discover.

  • Exam Skeleton + Information + Practice Questions

    Posted by Andrew Bennett Friday 08 September 2017, 12:31:07 AM.

    Hello everybody,

    I have created a "skeleton" of tomorrow's exam -- the exam paper (including instructions etc), but with the actual questions themselves removed.

    You can view it [here] . I recommend having a read through to familiarise yourself with the structure of the exam (number of questions, how to run autotests and submit them, etc), and to make sure you understand the exam instructions.

    A few things to note for tomorrow's exam:

    - If you're in the first session (3pm-4:30pm), you won't be allowed to leave until the exam is over.

    - If you're in the second session (4:20pm-6pm), you MUST arrive at (or before) 4:20pm. If you're not in the room at exactly 4:30pm, you won't be permitted to sit the exam.

    The only things you can bring with you into the exam are:

    - your student card
    - pens/pencils/etc
    - a clear water bottle (with no label)

    If you bring a phone, laptop, watches, or any other electronic devices you must turn them OFF and leave them in your bag.

    We will provide you with paper you can write/draw on during the exam.

    You can check your exam seating [here] : make sure you know where you're going so that you're not late! You can see a map of where the various CSE labs are [here] .

    I've also had a few requests for clarification about how the marks will work for the Week 7 and Week 10 exams . Your final mark will be the better of the two marks you get for the Week 7 and Week 10 exam. So if you get 80% tomorrow and 75% in Week 10, you'll get 80%. If you get 70% tomorrow and 90% in the Week 10 exam, you'll get 90%. If you get 100% tomorrow, you won't have to sit the Week 10 exam, since you've already gotten the best possible grade.

    Finally, I have released some revision questions on arrays, and some practice exam questions . I'll also be adding to this between now and the Week 10 prac. You can find those [here] .

    Good luck for the exam, and I'll see you all tomorrow.

  • Practice Exam#1 - Seating allocation

    Posted by Mei Cheng Whale Wednesday 06 September 2017, 12:10:25 PM.

    Check when and where you will be taking the exam.

    Note that the room that you are allocated to is unlikely to be the same as the OTH lab that you were enrolled in. If you were enrolled or selected the second (later) session on the swap form, you have to assemble in a corralling room at 4:20pm.

  • Assignment 1 is here!

    Posted by Jashank Jeremy Tuesday 05 September 2017, 03:16:07 AM, last modified Tuesday 05 September 2017, 03:16:24 AM.

    The fractal of fun continues... assignment 1 is now up! Head over to the Assignment 1 pages on WebCMS 3 for all the details, and to ask questions.

  • Friday's exam: timeslot swapping and details on exact times

    Posted by Andrew Bennett Tuesday 05 September 2017, 01:48:34 AM.

    Hello everybody,

    I have some important information about the exact times for Friday's practice practical exam.

    • For students in the 15:00 - 16:30 timeslot
      • 15:00 - 15:15 Students wait outside lab room.
      • 15:15 - 16:30 Exam (incl reading). Students must not leave during exam.
      • 16:30 - 16:33 Students wait inside lab room, get ready to leave at 16:33.
    • For students in the 16:30 - 18:00 timeslot:
      • 16:20 - 16:40 Students assemble in a tutorial room. Students arriving after 16:30 cannot take exam . Attendance taken. No communication via mobile devices, laptops, carrier pidgeons, etc is permitted after 16:20.
      • 16:40 - 16:45 Students escorted to lab room.
      • 16:45 - 18:00 Exam (incl reading). Students allow to leave early.
      • Note that students in the 16:30 timeslot MUST arrive 10 minutes early, at 16:20.

    We have put together a form where you can update your timeslot preference for Friday's exam.

    You can view it and fill it in here: https://cgi.cse.unsw.edu.au/~cs1511/17s2/seating/exam1/register.cgi/

    I will be releasing more information in the days before the exam about the format/structure of the exam and questions.

  • Upcoming Practical Exam

    Posted by Andrew Bennett Saturday 02 September 2017, 04:03:51 PM, last modified Sunday 03 September 2017, 02:28:19 PM.

    Hello everyone,

    As you may have seen in your timetables, we have a practical exam scheduled for Friday Week 7 (8th September). This is what the "OTHER" component of your course timetable is. You'll either be enrolled in the 3-4:30pm or 4:30-6pm timeslot.

    This will be a practice practical exam, where you will be required to solve tasks by writing programs that use arrays .

    There are two practical exam "hurdles" in this course (exams which you must pass in order to pass the course). One is on arrays, and the other is on linked lists (which you will be learning in the second half of semester).

    Week 7's practical exam will be a "practice run", where you get a chance to experience the exam environment, and to get used to what practical exams are like. The "real" practical exam for arrays will be held in Week 10.

    However, if you get full marks in this "practice" practical exam, we'll count that as your arrays exam mark, and you won't have to sit the Week 10 exam! Woohoo!

    And if you don't get full marks, that's fine -- it's just a practice run, and when the Week 10 exam comes around, you'll hopefully be feeling a lot more confident about sitting a practical exam.

    If you also don't pass the Week 10 exam, you'll have another chance in the final exam to pass the arrays "hurdle" -- that is, if you pass some specific question(s) in the final practical exam about arrays, you'll have passed the arrays hurdle.

    If you are registered with UNSW Disability Services and require educational adjustments for exams, and have not yet sent me your letter of support, please do so ASAP by emailing cs1511@cse.unsw.edu.au so that we can ensure your adjustments are in place.

    If you are unable to make your scheduled timeslot for the exam , it might be possible for you to sit the exam in the other of the two timeslots (3-4:30pm, 4:30pm-6pm), but this is not guaranteed. If this applies to you, please get in touch ASAP by emailing cs1511@cse.unsw.edu.au so we can try to arrange something. Make sure your email includes COMP1511 in the subject, has your zID in the body of the email, and is sent from your university email address.

    In order to prepare for the exam, make sure you've completed the Week 5 and 6 exercises that involve arrays (and strings) .

  • Marks and submissions temporarily unavailable in WebCMS3

    Posted by Jashank Jeremy Wednesday 30 August 2017, 12:28:41 PM, last modified Thursday 31 August 2017, 12:28:01 PM.

    Update: it's fixed, thanks to the wonderful team of people who look after WebCMS3. If you're still having trouble, let us know.

    Hello! WebCMS3 is currently experiencing problems viewing marks and submissions, which you'll see as the grades page only shows "N/A" and all the "check submission" pages showing errors and no submission.

    Your submissions haven't disappeared, and from a terminal on a CSE system or on VLAB, you can run 

    1511 classrun check activity-name

    to check your submission, and 

    DISPLAY=; 1511 classrun sturec

    to see your marks.

    Alternatively, you can check Give Online for marks and submissions.

    This issue should only be temporary, and we're hoping it will be resolved in the next day or two. Our apologies for any confusion.

  • ​Assignment 0 Marks FAQ

    Posted by Andrew Bennett Tuesday 29 August 2017, 03:18:51 PM.

    I've set up a webpage where you can see details about the tests that your program didn't pass.

    To see it, go to the following webpage, and log in with your zid and zpass : https://cgi.cse.unsw.edu.au/~cs1511/assign0/results.cgi

    I also have written answers to some questions I've been asked multiple times:

    Q : Help, `1511 classrun sturec` doesn't work on VLAB and I get a weird error.

    A : For some reason, that command doesn't work on VLAB. As a workaround, you can view grades on webcms, or through Give Online [ here ]. The command should still work fine on lab computers.

    Q : I passed all of the unit tests in the stub code, and I passed the autotest, why didn't I get 74/74?

    A : From the assignment spec:

    "The remaining 74% of the marks for this assignment will come from the correctness of your program, i.e. what proportion of the autotests your program passes. These autotests will not be available to you during the course of the assignment, and will only be run after the due date of the assignment. Therefore, it is in your best interests to write your own extensive unit tests, so that you can catch any bugs in your program before we run our tests against it."

    The tests that we ran over your final submission were much more extensive than the unit tests provided in the stub code, to cover all of the possible cases.

    If you tested your code extensively by writing many of your own unit tests, and by running all of the shared unit tests that students contributed, you would have hopefully caught most of the bugs in your code. If you passed all of the shared unit tests, then it's quite likely you passed most, if not all, of our final tests.

    However, if your code only passed the assert tests in the stub code, there is no guarantee at all that your code was correct, as we intentionally only gave you a very limited set of tests.

  • Andrew's consultation hour today (K17 G01) not running

    Posted by Andrew Bennett Tuesday 29 August 2017, 01:13:35 PM.

    Hello everybody,

    Unfortunately my voice is still stuck in another timezone, so I won't be running my face-to-face consultation hour today.

    However, I will be answering emails [from now until 5:30pm], so if you have any questions that you would have asked me during the consultation today, please feel free to send me an email with that question.

    My email address is: andrew.bennett@unsw.edu.au.

    Please make sure you send any emails from your uni email address, and include your zid. Please also put "COMP1511" in the email subject, so that I don't accidentally miss it.

    I will soon be sending out another announcement with answers to some frequently asked questions about the provisional marks, as well with information on how you can see a breakdown of your mark, and which specific tests you failed.

  • Provisional Assignment 0 marks are available

    Posted by Andrew Bennett Tuesday 29 August 2017, 01:56:00 AM.


    Well done on finishing your first assignment! You should be very proud of what you've managed to achieve.

    A *provisional* correctness mark is available, based on how your program went at solving our hundreds and hundreds of unseen unit tests. This mark is not final, and may still change, but should be a good indicator, for most people, of your program's performance. The mark does not take into account any late penalty, or any other penalties that may be applied.

    The mark shown is out of 74. Remember that your assignment marks are split up 74% correctness, 15% style, and 1% unit test.

    You can also see whether you submitted at least one valid unit test - Y means Yes you did, No means No you did not.

    If your provisional correctness mark is a dot, this means something went wrong - maybe your code didn't compile, maybe you didn't submit your code before I generated the marks earlier today. Don't stress - if you're not sure what went wrong, just send me an email and we'll work out what's going on.

    If you submitted late, your assignment will still be assessed - this mark is just a quick early mark to give you an indication of your progress.

    At a later point, you will be able to see the full breakdown of what test categories your program passed, and details of the tests that you failed.

    To see your marks, you can go to the "marks" section on webcms (down the bottom of the sidebar, near your name). You can also run `1511 classrun sturec` from a terminal (e.g vlab or ssh)

    And finally, if you haven't submitted yet, it's not too late - there is a late penalty of 1% off the maximum possible mark per hour late your submission is. Submitting it at noon on Tuesday would mean your maximum possible mark would become 64% - if your program would have been awarded 95% it will now get 64%, if it would have been awarded 55% it will still get 55%.

  • Milestone 2 due Wednesday

    Posted by Andrew Bennett Sunday 27 August 2017, 05:46:45 PM.

    As the assignment is due on Sunday night (tonight... mere hours away), we've decided to shift the due date for the Milestone 2 write-up to be Wednesday instead.

    For this Milestone, we've set up templates directly within the blog post editor, so you won't need to manually copy across the template yourself.


    To complete this milestone write-up: fill in the Milestone 2 template in a new blog post.

    Follow the instructions [here] to create a new blog post from a milestone template.

    Make sure to select the "Milestone 2" template.

    This milestone is due on Wednesday the 30th of August, at 11:59:59pm -- due date extended as the assignment was due on Sunday.

  • Assignment 0 is due tonight

    Posted by Andrew Bennett Sunday 27 August 2017, 12:46:01 PM.

    Hello everyone,

    I hope you've been having a good weekend.

    This is a friendly reminder that Assignment 0 is due tonight , at 11:59pm.

    A few last-minute tips:

    - Make sure you have not changed the function prototype or the provided #defines. If you change e.g. #define CITY_ADELAIDE to be a number other than 0, your code will fail the tests.

    - Make sure your code does not printf anything, and does not scanf anything.

    - Make sure the code you submit compiles. You can test this by running the autotest: `1511 autotest assign0`, or by submitting (where it will run the autotest before submitting). Several students have submitted code that doesn't compile. Please make sure you're not one of them.

    - Make sure you try submitting well and truly before the deadline, in case something in your code isn't working. Don't assume that just because it works on your computer, it will work on CSE.

    - You must submit at least one valid unit test to the shared unit tests. I have been running a script to test your unit tests and tell you if they're broken, but don't rely on it.

    Note that you can submit your code multiple times without any penalty (as long as it's before the due date).

    If you are having problems submitting through WebCMS (or if you get a "tests could not be run" error), try submitting through [ give online ], or directly from a lab computer or vlab.

    Good luck with the assignment.

  • Due date for week 5 exercises extended by 1 week

    Posted by Andrew Bennett Thursday 24 August 2017, 08:26:18 PM.

    Since Assignment 0 is due on Sunday, as well as there being quite a few activities this week, we have decided to give you an extra week to work on the Week 5 exercises.

    There will still be a lab next week, and we will still release new lab exercises next week.

    Good luck with your assignment.

  • Assignment 0

    Posted by Andrew Bennett Sunday 20 August 2017, 09:40:23 PM.

    I hope you're all making good progress on Assignment 0.

    There are a few important things you need to be aware of:

    1. There is an Assignment 0 FAQ , under "Assignments" on the course website. I will be updating this with answers to frequently asked questions about the assignment, so if you have any questions about the assignment, be sure to check the FAQ first.

    2. It's possible that changes may need to be made to the assignment stub code (e.g. if a unit test is incorrect). If this happens, the stub code will be updated, and the version number will increase. The current (as of this email) stub code version is 1.0.4 . If you have a different version, you should check out the latest version on the course website.

    3. Information on the marking criteria and late penalty can be found on the assignment page . You should read over this yourself, but in summary:

    - Your assignment will be marked for correctness and programming style . You also need to submit at least one good unit test to the shared unit tests.

    - The late penalty is 1% per hour off the maximum possible assignment mark . If you handed your assignment in 24 hours late, it would be able to get a mark no higher than 76%. If your assignment would have been awarded 50%, it would still receive 50%. However, if your assignment would have been awarded 80%, your mark would be reduced to 76%.

    4. And, a friendly reminder: do not use any syntax that hasn't been covered so far in the course . You can only use syntax that was covered up until the assignment was released, which means you cannot use arrays or loops. (You can use functions, and we highly recommend you make good use of functions in your solution).

    Good luck!

  • How to post code in blogs with indentation etc

    Posted by Andrew Bennett Saturday 12 August 2017, 05:10:14 PM, last modified Saturday 12 August 2017, 06:25:02 PM.

    Many of you have been having issues with posting code in your blogs, where the formatting/indentation doesn't work.

    I've put together some instructions on how you can paste code in your blog with the indentation etc still working.

    The instructions are here: https://webcms3.cse.unsw.edu.au/COMP1511/17s2/resources/12039 .

    I hope you find them helpful!

  • Consultations start tomorrow (Tuesday)

    Posted by Andrew Bennett Tuesday 08 August 2017, 12:26:44 AM.

    I will be holding weekly consultations on Tuesdays from 2:30pm to 3:30pm, in the ground floor consultation rooms of K17 (the Computer Science building), starting from tomorrow.

    If you have any questions about the course -- content, administrative issues, assessments, etc -- feel free to come along and ask me.

  • Milestone write-ups

    Posted by Andrew Bennett Friday 04 August 2017, 03:41:20 PM.

    I've had a few questions about the "milestone writeups" -- what they are, what you'll need to do, when they'll be due.

    All will be revealed very soon. The first due date won't be at the end of this week (week 2) as it was tentatively scheduled in the course scheduled, but will be at the end of next week (week 3) instead.

    For the writeups, there will be a series of short questions for you to give brief responses to, about your progress in the course thus far (or since the previous milestone, which will be roughly every two weeks after the first submission).

    It should hopefully be a quick and easy thing for you to do, while giving you a chance to think about how you're going in the course and to help you stay on top of things.

    I'll be posting more information and full instructions on what will be involved ASAP, by the end of this week (but hopefully sooner -- I'm aiming to release it by the end of today).

    But, rest assured, I won't make you hand in any assessment tasks without giving you full details about what you need to do and without making sure everybody understands what's going on.

  • Help Sessions (or Consultations)

    Posted by Mei Cheng Whale Thursday 03 August 2017, 11:47:33 AM.

    They start today 5-7pm in Strings Lab (J17 302). Check the Help Sessions . Due to the short notice, not all tutors are available today. But at least one will be.

  • Lecture recordings available on course website

    Posted by Andrew Bennett Wednesday 26 July 2017, 02:56:24 PM.

    Hi everybody,

    I hope your first week back at uni has been going well so far.

    The lecture recordings are now available on the course website , on the left hand side under "Lecture Recordings".

    The link to the lecture recordings may change in the future, but you'll always be able to find the most up-to-date link on the course sidebar. Make sure you check the course sidebar rather than bookmarking where it currently links to.

    If you are in the WEB stream, or you missed the first lecture for any reason, you must watch the lecture videos before your tutorial/lab each week. It's also very important if you miss a lecture during semester that you watch the lecture videos to catch up on that lecture before attending the following lecture, as the course builds on itself each week.

    I'll try to have the videos up as soon as possible after each lecture. There were some technical difficulties this week with viewing the videos through Echo360 (where lecture videos normally go), so I wasn't able to get them up as quickly as I would have liked -- my apologies.


  • New Tut-Lab Class (F09B) Friday 9-12

    Posted by Mei Cheng Whale Tuesday 25 July 2017, 07:47:23 PM.

    If this time slot suit you better, you may swap to it via myUNSW before end of this week.

  • Welcome to COMP1511

    Posted by Andrew Bennett Monday 24 July 2017, 06:23:41 PM.

    Welcome to COMP1511 and welcome to CSE!

    It was lovely meeting you all in the lecture earlier today.

    The COMP1511 website is at https://webcms3.cse.unsw.edu.au/COMP1511/17s2/ and you login using your zID and zPass .

    You've probably been told to access your course through UNSW's Moodle system, but most CSE courses don't use Moodle (because we have better systems in-house :-).

    The course website has the slides from today's lecture, as well as the tutorial and lab exercises for the week. We are also in the process of adding more resources that will help you get set up and get started, so stay tuned.

    Note that Tutorials (aka "tutes") and Laboratory Classes (aka "labs") start in Week 1, with a nice easy introduction to your friendly tutor, CSE and the Labs. Check under Timetable on the web site for the times and locations of your classes.

    If you have a laptop bring it to your week 1 lab if you can.

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