COMP6771 Notices

Passing on opportunity

Posted by Hayden 🎉 Tuesday 05 October 2021, 01:51:40 PM.

Hi everyone,

An opportunity was pushed across my desk relating to a UNSW project, I thought I'd pass it on. see below.

If you're interested, please reach out to Andrew.OReilly-Nugent@climatefriendly.com with your Resume/CV and academic transcript. I will verify your COMP6771 mark upon request if Andrew asks me and can show you've sent a copy of your transcript.

If I had to guess, they'll predominately be interested in students who scored more than 80/100 in COMP6771 and maybe have some other project experience. But who knows! No harm in reaching out if it interests you.

I don't have any more information, so best to reach out to them!

Hayden

Supp exam when close to failing

Posted by Hayden 🎉 Thursday 02 September 2021, 03:44:57 PM.

If you are a student in your final term and this was the only course you have failed; you will have been identified by the student services team as a student who's potentially eligible for supplementary assessment (e.g. a Supp exam).
If this is not your final course in your final term, we cannot offer you supplementary assessment, except via Special Consideration.
- CSE

Supplementary Exam

Posted by Hayden 🎉 Wednesday 01 September 2021, 10:15:32 PM, last modified Thursday 02 September 2021, 03:47:10 PM.

Students sitting the supplementary exam will have details sent to them 10 minutes prior to the exam start time. UNSW Exams unit has emailed you with date details. The exam will run from 2pm-5pm.

Informal Chats

Posted by Hayden 🎉 Wednesday 25 August 2021, 08:37:33 PM, last modified Wednesday 25 August 2021, 08:50:40 PM.

Hi everyone!

If you want to come say hi, ask me any questions, talk about CSE, degrees, or really anything random - come and join a call tomorrow open to anyone in our community. Just a chance to chat and catch up. Anyone is welcome.

1:30pm - 3pm Thursday 26th August

<label></label> https://unsw.zoom.us/j/85898033662

Exam Starting Now

Posted by Hayden 🎉 Monday 23 August 2021, 01:55:16 PM.

Please check your email or the pinned post on the Ed forum for information about starting the exam. Please monitor your email throughout the exam for more updates.

Ass3 Results Released + Final Exam

Posted by Hayden 🎉 Sunday 22 August 2021, 12:16:48 AM.

Hi everyone!

Assignment 3

Your assignment 3 marks are now available. Your grade is available on the grades page , and you can collect your assignment & feedback via this page .

If you have any issues with your marking (automarking or other), please DO NOT email me , cs6771 , or a tutor , but instead COMPLETE THIS FORM .

In terms of marks, the distribution was roughly:

• ~25% got an HD grade
• ~20% got a DN grade
• ~19% got a CR grade
• ~18% for a PS grade
• ~18% got < 50% (though this counts non-attempts and some dropouts, so the number is inflated).

Revision Lecture

Thanks for those who came to the revision lecture on Friday! You can watch the recording here . The last 30 minutes really wasn't super exciting, so I would generally recommend you focus on the first ~40 min as a priority.

Marks required to pass

I have added a mark to your grades page that tells you what the minimum mark you need in the final exam is to pass the course:

• 0/30 means you've already passed the course based on your current marks. Yay!
• ?/30 where ? is between 1-29 means that is the mark you need out of 30 in the final exam to pass. This is the scaled exam mark (which could be a lot or nothing, depending on how we scale the final exam).
• 30/30 means you are unable to pass the course regardless of exam (though in some cases don't be alarmed if you're pending resolutions on other mark readjustments).

Final Exam

Your final exam is on Monday. Ensure you've read the exam page .

I will email you shortly before the start of the exam. I have also sent you a test email a moment ago to ensure you're receiving emails. If you don't have it in your UNSW inbox send me an email.

The exam spec will be available at 2pm (start of exam), and your personal exam repo will be available at least 15 minutes prior to the exam.

Thanks :) :)

MyExperience Reminder! Only 48 hours left :(

Posted by Hayden 🎉 Tuesday 10 August 2021, 07:00:14 PM.

Hi everyone!

Please fill out MyExperience ASAP! 😲 😲 Only 35% of people have filled it out.

CLICK HERE TO FILL IT OUT
CLICK HERE TO FILL IT OUT
CLICK HERE TO FILL IT OUT
CLICK HERE TO FILL IT OUT

This will be the last reminder. It takes a few minutes. Leave trash in the comments if that's what it takes, at least fill out the ratings :) Thank you!!!!

Hayden

🐕 End of week 10 updates

Posted by Hayden 🎉 Sunday 08 August 2021, 11:46:31 PM.

Hey everyone,

I hope everyone is resting easy after submitting assignment 3 nearly a week ago! You've completed 70% of the course - congratulations. We're still aiming to get your ass3 marks back to you before your exam :) Tutors are working hard.

MyExperience

Please don't forget to fill in MyExperience :( Did you know that more than 3 out of 4 students haven't completed MyExperience?? 😞 Do your best to find a spare 5 minutes to fill it in. Feedback is always great, and the higher the participation in the survey is the more weight it gives everyone's voice.

FILL IN MYEXPERIENCE HERE: https://myexperience.unsw.edu.au/

🙏 🙏 🙏 🙏 🙏 🙏 🙏 🙏 🙏 🙏 🙏 🙏 🙏 🙏 🙏

Revision Q&A

I will be hosting a revision Q&A on Friday the 20th of August from 12pm-1:30pm . It will be done via YouTube and links will be available on the timetable page just before. It will be recorded.

If you have any other questions about the exam or need help, please post on the forum - we'll be there to help out.

Sample Exam

The raw 20T2 exam was released over the weekend.

A more scope-appropriate sample exam has also been released, and information about that is on the exam page .

Have a great week :)

✈️ End of week 9 updates

Posted by Hayden 🎉 Friday 30 July 2021, 11:55:12 AM.

Hi everyone!

Hope you've doing well :) A lot of updates to share this week so take the time to read below.

Assignment 2 Marks release

Assignment 2 marks have been released, and wow, I think about 60% of students scored over 95% on the automarking! Congratulations to so many of you.

A big thank you to your tutors for blitzing through the marking, they've done an incredible job turning around the workload in the time. We're glad we can release this prior to assignment 3 being due.

Overall, the average mark for ass2 was 80% mark, with 78% of students getting above a 75% mark. About 17 students receive full marks for the assignment.

To find your marks, you can go to your grades page , and see to feedback you can go here .

If you have an issue you need to raise about your automarks, please fill in this form . Do not email cs6771@cse.unsw.edu.au, as we will just direct you to the form.

If you think there has been a mistake with your marking of best practices or the quality of your tests, please email the tutor who marked your assignment 2. I did not mark anyone work directly. Please allow for at least a week before they reply.

Assignment 3 late penalty change & help

I had a few students ask for an extension yesterday (not through special consideration). Doing a blanket extension so late into the assignment window creates some issues around fairness and equity, plus extending it risks you not getting your marks back before the final exam (something students have been even more vocal about in the past). I've been looking at what we can do to help ease the pressure off the last few days. Here is what we're doing:

1. Reducing the late penalty from 2% per hour to 1% per hour off the maximum. We will still have a hard cut-off for Wed 10pm week 10 (so that we can start marking), but this should take the edge off the first day or two for certain people. In particular it will take the edge off the Tuesday for many people.
2. We've gone from 2 hours of help sessions to 8 hours over the weekend. Please be aware of course that these help sessions can be crowded, so do be patient!
3. An elaboration of the performance tests below

Assignment 3 performance tests clarified

Here is a breakdown of the number of tests we'll be running for each kind of section. For simplicity, you can assume each test is worth roughly the same number of marks:

• Modifiers: 7
• Rule of 5: 4
• Accessors: 5
• Constructors: 4
• Iterators: 4
• Other: 4

This is a rough list and subjective to change slightly, but it will give you a ballpark to get a sense of how testing is distributed and what makes up the performance mark.

MyExperience is now open

MyExperience for T2 is now open! It's open for a bit over a week, so no rush, though please make sure you take the time to fill in the forms and leave the feedback. It's a vital part of the evolution of every course (this one included!). We already have plans and changes for 2022 and those can be made even better with good feedback.

Exam information now available

Some exam information has been provided on the exam page . Take a read of it! We will talk through this more and answer questions you might have in the Tuesday night lecture of week 10.

Optiver Guest Lecture on Monday

Optiver is still scheduled to give a 1 hour guest lecture at 6pm-7pm on Monday the 2nd of August. It's generally considered a good guest lecture, so either come along or checkout the recording after the fact :)

Informal chats & catch Up

At the end of this term, I'm going to hold a 90 minute open meeting/call/chat with anyone in CSE that wants to come and talk about courses they've done in the past, courses they might do with me in the future, have conversations about education, or just chat about anything amidst this fairly isolating world of COVID.

It will be 1:30pm-3pm on the 26th of August. The zoom link can be found here: https://unsw.zoom.us/j/85898033662

It is open to literally everyone. So come hang out and chat - if you want a reminder about it either put it in your calendar or shoot me an email so I can remind you!

Thanks. See you next week!

Hayden

🦀 End of week 8 updates

Posted by Hayden 🎉 Saturday 24 July 2021, 01:57:19 PM.

Hi everyone!

Very few updates to provide this week. Just keep going with assignment 3 :)

I thought I'd take this opportunity to respond to some of the feedback that has been collected this term, and either explain areas we want to improve on or give some background on choices that are made:

• I wish we went into more depth on "X" : I think I've mentioned this in a previous lecture, but we go into as much depth on things as we feel you need for assessable material. There are lots of topics I'd love to go into more depth too because it's interesting, but not quite necessary. So never worry about you "missing some critical depth" on a topic - although if you are just curious about stuff email me and let me know.
• I want more examples of "X" : Some people mentioned this for a particular lecture :) If there are particular slides etc you'd like more examples to, that you also feel isn't covered in tutorial solutions, please feel free to email me directly to share your thoughts!
• Can we make the slide background white : Yes, I can do this, it just requires some extra effort - sorry. If there are particular slides you want in white just email me and I can try and sort it out :)
• I wish tutorials were more than mini-lectures : I totally agree, and it's a topic I've raised with CSE about the weirdness of tutorials for level 6 courses during COVID. It's an ongoing thing to sort out, and I'm on the same page here.
• Stop flicking through the slides so quickly : Yes, fair! It's just a tick I have. I'll try and be more aware of it
• Please slow down / Please stop going so slow : Every term a handful of students say slow down, and another handful say go faster. I think I'm pretty happy with the balance I have at the moment, and I'm aware that it won't suit everyone's personal needs. That being said, if people ever have more specific examples of something they felt was too fast/slow I'm always happy for you to email me!
• Don't google things during the lecture : This is an intentional strategy that I understand gives the surface level impression for some that things are chaotic or unknown. The majority of the time I google things during lectures I already know what the answer is, but I take a lot of value in trying to piece through the journey the same way that a lot of students would - which is that as part of problem and solution discovery there is a natural awkwardness of having to find the bread crumbs along the way. I think that giving something more realistic helps with confidence building - but that's just my professional opinion at this point in time! If you have more thoughts you're welcome to email me and share.

Congrats to everyone who has gotten themselves neck deep in the assignment so far. Make sure you really try and start it this weekend, otherwise next weekend might be a bit painful.

As always if you need anything let me know, and I hope you enjoy your day. The weather today looks better than tomorrow :)

See you on Monday!

🎩 End of week 7 updates

Posted by Hayden 🎉 Saturday 17 July 2021, 06:51:07 PM.

Hi everyone!

Congratulations for getting your 2nd assignment in on Monday. That's 40% of the course already out of the way for you!! It was really exciting seeing everyone learning a lot more about C++.

Can you believe we only have 3 more weeks to go after this? Crazy fast term.

Some quick updates for you all!

• The last of the lecture slides and tutes will be released for Monday.
• Assignment 2 marking is starting tomorrow , and we're hoping to get that back to you within 2 weeks from today.
• Assignment 3 is still ongoing, so please make sure to make a start on it! It's definitely harder than the other two assignments, but it's also worth twice as much as assignment 1 - so expect and embrace the challenge.

We'll continue to be here to support you.

See you on Monday!

💀 Monday 12th July update (UNSW Outage)

Posted by Hayden 🎉 Monday 12 July 2021, 04:31:28 PM.

Hi everyone,

UNSW had a major power outage today which led to intermittent CSE systems for 5 hours between 11am-4pm. In light of this, assignment 2 due date is being extended to 2pm on Tuesday the 13th of July. You lost 5 business hours today so we'll give you 5 business hours tomorrow - that's as simple as it is.

Other updates:

• I am moving my tutorial (just for week 7) from Tue 12-1 to Wed 11-12 . It will be recorded as always :)
• Assignment 3 is being released at 8pm tonight! We'll chat about it sometime this week or next week where we have spare time in lectures.

See you tonight :) Thanks!

🌻 End of week 5 updates

Posted by Hayden 🎉 Saturday 03 July 2021, 10:33:21 AM.

Hi everyone!

I hope you have a great flex week and try and at least get a little bit of a break (albeit in lockdown). Make sure you do watch the week 5 lectures - it has critical information not only for your assignment but about testing practices.

Week 8 lectures and tutorials will be released for the start of week 7. I won't bother you with an email next week unless I have some important updates :) So the next you might hear from us is the Monday lecture of week 7!

Assignment 1 Marks Released

You can see your released assignment 1 marks HERE .

Things to note:

1. We have prioritised getting marks out quickly (before final course drop date). This does mean that we will have to do some followups for people who submit late, and those who had massive compile issues. I decided to avoid waiting another half a week to get everything perfect.
2. The bottom of the marked assignment says it's out of "8.25". Just ignore that, it's a long story. It's just text, and everyone's assignment is out of 15.
3. Tutors marked students randomly, so please don't assume the tutor that teaches you during tutorials marked your work.
4. If you submitted your assignment late (e.g. ELS or extension) then we still haven't marked yours, or have marked an older version of yours. We're doing all the late submissions in a batch and will sort that out this weekend and email you.
5. You can see which tutor marked you by looking for their ZID at the bottom of the marked file. Ignore my name, I didn't mark any (though I had to modify a bunch). I've put an example below of where you can see the ZID of the tutor who marked you.

If something is wrong with your submission, please see instructions below:

• If your code failed to compile and you think it's a simple mistake on your or our end, please fill in this form .
• If your code successfully compiled, but you failed most (90%+) of the tests , and you think it's because of a very trivial mistake in your work, please fill in this form .
• If you aren't clear on why you've lost marks on C++ best practices or on test design, please email the tutor who marked you.

For any other queries email cs6771@cse.unsw.edu.au - but if you email cs6771 when you should do the above, any resolutions will be slower. Please allow us a week to get back to you :)

🌻 End of week 4 updates

Posted by Hayden 🎉 Sunday 27 June 2021, 11:42:49 AM.

Hi everyone!

Not much to report on this week. Hope that everything is going well for you!

• Assignment 1 marking is still underway. Lot's to mark. Will update you at the end of week 5.
• Tutorial 7 and week 7 lectures have been released.
• I have added some further clarifications on dos-and-donts to the assignment 2 spec in the latest deployment that just rolled out. None of it is really new, mainly just a few key clarifications from lectures as I got the impression there were a couple of people confused about some things last week.

See you on Monday night! Have a great day :)

🙉 End of week 3 updates

Posted by Hayden 🎉 Saturday 19 June 2021, 07:26:13 PM.

Hi everyone!

Congrats on (99%~ of you) submitting your first assignment. I hope now that it's submitted you feel a little bit of weight off your shoulders and you're a little more confident headspace you can tackle the rest of the course. And of course, we'll be here to help you out.

General Updates

• Assignment 1 marking has a target completion of Monday week 6. This will give you a week with the feedback prior to your second assignment being due. As I said in the lectures, lots to automark! Tutors will be working very hard for you.
• Assignment 2 will be released on Monday @ 9pm, right after our Monday lecture.
• Colm's tutorials this week are cancelled due to conflicting commitments. If you normally go to his tutorial please attend another one or watch the recording.
• Tutorial 5 and week 5 lectures have been released.

See you on Monday night! Have a great Sunday.

Feedback for Classes Lecture

Posted by Hayden 🎉 Tuesday 15 June 2021, 08:01:31 PM, last modified Tuesday 15 June 2021, 08:02:01 PM.

I forgot the QR code on the recording. Whoops. If you just watched the lecture or watched it recently if you could share feedback for week 3 classes lecture here:

❄️ End of week 2 updates

Posted by Hayden 🎉 Sunday 13 June 2021, 10:28:26 AM.

Hi everyone!

Hope you're have a good week 2 :) Great to see so many making progress on their work.

Assignment 1 Updates

I just wanted to share a few key things about assignment 1:

• Some of you might have started this assignment with C-style syntax (e.g. pointers, primitive arrays etc). While it's fine that you might have started there, make sure you fix it up before the due date. Remember you are getting marked for your ability to avoid C-specific features that we've talked about in lectures to avoid. These include C-style arrays, pointers, malloc/free/new/delete, and other minor things we might chat about in week 3. Don't freak out, there isn't some strict criteria to avoid we're literally just saying "code like we have in lectures and tutes".
• I have added a section at the bottom to all of your assignment 1 repos called "FAQ". In this section I just elaborated and answered one question that was perplexing some students about what is the write file path for english.txt - should it be "./english.txt" or "./test/word_ladder/english.txt"? It's answered in the FAQ :) You may have to accept a merge request if it didn't merge automatically (though in most cases it would have been automatic).

General Updates

• The Monday lecture is cancelled due to the public holiday. We only have 1 lecture in week 3.
• If you want to see the solutions for tut01, tut02, etc just go to the "solution" branch on gitlab. A drop down to change branches is on the main git page. You just change "master" to "solution".
• For both tutorials and assignments, don't forget to always merge in any pending merge requests if they don't merge automatically.
• Help sessions are still running. Please remember that a tutor's job in the help session isn't necessarily to ensure everyone of your problems are solved right then and there, but rather to ensure that you are given clear enough next steps to keep progressing through your issues.
• Tutorial 4 and week 4 lectures have been released.

See you on Tuesday night!

🌼 End of week 1 updates

Posted by Hayden 🎉 Sunday 06 June 2021, 02:19:10 AM.

Hi everyone!

Hope you've all had a great week 1 :) It was good to see so many in the lecture.

I want to say an absolute huge congratulations to so many people for getting stuck into assignment 1. I am not exaggerating when I say that this is one of the most engaged and pro-active cohorts of students I've seen in the first week of term. Further to that, I'm really impressed with watching so many people run into problems & obstacles, and instead of sitting down and giving up, you actually step up to debug, learn, and not be afraid to spend the time to make it happen. I think this is an exceptional and vital skill so many have demonstrated already.

Here are some key updates for you:

Assignment 1 Updates

Thank you for the early bird's patience on some of the little assignment 1 issues. A couple of them were just my fault, but many of them have been strange environment issues. Sadly, this isn't Python or Java or Javascript where things run in these well containerized/virtual environments. C++ compiles directly for running on hardware and that means things like the version of linux being used and a bunch of other small things can easily throw it all off. Often, the things that throw it off are things we didn't predict, and didn't have issue with on our end when testing it. We try and patch them rapidly and appreciate your patience.

Pretty much any little fixes or updates were pushed to your repo via merge requests (which often merge automatically when they can). However, some key things to point out:

• The SETUP_HOME.md instructions were updated for a lot of issues people faced.
• When loading english.txt, we're updating the path from ./english.txt to ./test/word_ladder/english.txt . This happens in your test files and in debugging_main.cpp. This is so that you can run all of your commands from the project directory, rather than cd 'ing into sub-folders and running binaries from there (which creates all kinds of confusion).

We can touch on ass1 if needed at the end of Monday's lecture.

General Updates

• Help sessions will begin in week 2. The times will be listed on the Help Sessions page , and will be posted on Monday :) Help sessions are always subject to change, so check them before you want to join.
• Every time someone posts a thread on Ed that I think is very useful for everyone to read - I pin it. I hope that reduces any stress levels for those who are worried about missing something.
• For both tutorials and assignments, don't forget to always merge in any pending merge requests.
• If you just want to share random facts about your day, life, or interests, just post on the forum under the "Fun" category. We're all online and lonely and bored half the time these days, so anyone should feel welcome to make themselves feel a little more part of the community.
• Tutorial 3 has been released.
• Week 3 lectures will be released on Monday.

See you on Monday!! :)

Welcome to COMP6771 21T2 🍪

Posted by Hayden 🎉 Friday 28 May 2021, 05:35:57 PM, last modified Monday 31 May 2021, 09:18:30 AM.

Hi everyone!

Welcome to COMP6771! Get excited to learn about C++. I always love teaching this course because usually after first year, when students dig deeper into the theory, some students just miss and love the idea of learning a whole new language. What's even more exciting is that in COMP6771 we don't just teach you the " what " a language is, but also the "how/why" surrounding a lot of things.

By the end of this course we want to provide you with a degree of confidence in building and testing your own software using C++.

Key Points

1. First lecture is Monday 31st May, 6pm-8pm, streamed on Youtube - link will be ON THIS PAGE .
2. Join our Forum (on EdStem) if you haven't already joined it. Introduce yourself, and ask any questions you have.
3. Pay attention to your tutorial time and location . All classes use use online zoom calls. Some zoom call links are still being processed - don't be alarmed.
4. Tutorials for week 1 and 2 have already been released, and you can find them on the Tutorials page .
5. Lectures for week 1 have been released, and lectures for week 2 are coming soon.
6. If you haven't used git (the version control software) before, I would strongly recommend that you complete lab0 on the Tutorials page .

About the course

I would encourage you all to take a moment to read the COURSE OUTLINE , because it highlights virtually everything. I will also go through this a little bit on Monday.

In terms of assessment, the course has 3 major components:

• 70% assignments (Across 3 separate assignments)
• 30% exam (mostly practical, no hurdle)

See you soon!

Enjoy your holidays!

Posted by Hayden 🎉 Saturday 22 May 2021, 10:29:15 PM.

Hi everyone. I'll be sending a notice at the end of this week (Friday) to welcome you to the course and share more information. I prefer to stick to radio silence for now so you can try and enjoy your break. :)