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CMPS 134 – Fall 2009, HW#0 (Due: Wednesday September 2, 2009)

Acknowledgement: This document is a slightly edited version of one prepared by P.M. Jackowitz.

Homework #0 – Getting Started and “Set Up” (Due: Wednesday September 2, 2009)

This assignment consists of activities that really constitute a “non-assignment”. These activities are not indicative of the work to be done on “real assignments”, but rather are merely preparatory to what we will be doing throughout the semester.

Upon completion (or essentially so) of these activities you are to “submit” a message to me (not an email message; see Part VII for the details of submitting) indicating your progress. I only plan to record receipt of your message, and provide brief feedback but will not assign a grade.

Of course, if you have difficulties or are unable to adequately complete these activities I am available to assist you as appropriate. I should not be your first line of assistance however. You should give it your own best effort first, secure other assistance (classmates, friends, Help-Desk, etc.) as appropriate, and then see me if necessary.

Part I – Register yourself on the “Course Web Page”

If you have not yet done so, visit the course web page at http://www.cs.scranton.edu/~mccloske/courses/cmps134/index_f09.html, select “Register”, enter your “R number”, complete the form, and then verify things by selecting the link labeled “View Roster”. It is necessary that you register yourself since all assignment work (including the message you are to submit for this activity) is to be submitted electronically to me via the web page. Also, my feedback will be accessible to you via the same facility.

Part II – Let me know your background

For this part of the assignment you are to compose a brief document in which you explain your computing background. I assume that everyone possesses basic computer literacy, so that is not what I am most interested in knowing. Rather I am interested in knowing whether or not you have ever programmed and which programming language(s) you may have used.

Now, don’t be concerned if you are unsure what I mean by “programming”. In past years, more than 80% of the students taking this course had never programmed before and thus were not familiar with any programming languages. So, if this is the case with you, realize that you will likely be in the majority. CMPS 134 is an introductory course, after all.

Use MicroSoft Word (or some equivalent tool) to prepare this explanation. It should be a paragraph or two in length, it must include your name, and it is expected to be properly written (i.e., using proper grammar and coherent sentences, such as would be expected of a capable college student).

Although this explanation could be attached to an email message and sent to me, I do not want you to do that. Instead, this assignment requires that you communicate your explanation to me via the “Submit/Review” link provided on the course web page. This is detailed near the end of this document.

Part III – Installing Java on your Personal Computer

R. W. McCloskey of 13

http://www.cs.scranton.edu/~jackowit/fall2009/c134/page.html


As a necessary prerequisite to developing programming assignments for this course, every student needs to make use of a “programming environment” containing the “tools” used to prepare programs for execution and to execute them.

If you have a personal computer and intend to use it for work in this course then you’ll need to install Java and an IDE (i.e., Integrated Development Environment). Java is the programming language that we will use in the course and BlueJ is an IDE we will use to prepare and maintain the programs that we compose, at least during the first part of the course.). All of these tools are freely available as downloads, and links for each are provided on the course web page under the Java-related Links heading.

If you do not have a personal computer, you can skip to Part VI (which will, however, ask you to repeat the activities described in Part V). Reading the rest of this part, as well as Part IV, is recommended, however.

If you have little or even no experience installing software then this assignment will benefit you in that it will require you to deal with some issues that you may not have encountered before. Typically, you install software by downloading a file (containing a program), double-clicking on it (to run it), and then following the instructions and answering the prompts that it presents to you. You may be uncertain about some things, but I encourage you to follow the recommendations and defaults given.

Although some of the steps are detailed, there are important concepts behind these details that are worth discovering, even though the details remain a nuisance. Believe me, I detest the details but I do realize the need to conquer them in order to move forward with what needs to be done. The details constantly change, but it’s the concepts that persist, and this is a vitally important point to learn about computers and computing.

Follow the link given on the course web page to download and install Java on the personal computer you intend to use for this course. Installing Java basically means having files copied and configuring them so that you can readily use the “Java Compiler” and the “Java Virtual Machine”. You most likely already have something known as the “jre” on your computer, since browsers use this to allow you to view and navigate the web. We need more than the “jre”, which stands for Java Run-time Environment, in this course. We need something known as the “SDK” or “JDK”, which stand for Software Development Kit or Java Development Kit. It is this that you need to download and install. Specifically, you are to select the button “JDK 6 Update 16”.



You’ll then need to agree to the license agreement and select your platform in order to “continue”. If you are using some other platform (Mac for example) then you’ll have to obtain your download from some other place. See me if you have difficulty locating the download. I do not own or use a Mac, but I can point you in direction of others who do.

We do not need the Sun Download Manager, so I recommend you select the filename, jdk-6u16-windows-i586.exe, rather than the orange button.



I normally save files I download in some designated directory and I recommend you do the same.

Anyway, you then need to “run” the file just downloaded in order to begin the installation. You’ll need to accept the license agreement and I encourage you to use the default settings as you proceed. The installation may take several minutes, but eventually you’ll see something like the following. Click next to continue.



You may receive the following message; if you do, check the box and retry.

Eventually you should receive a notice that the process is complete and so you click Finish. Your browser may open and present you with a page inviting you to register with Sun (the company that “owns” Java), but there is no need for you to do so. At this point, Java should be installed on your machine.

Do not attempt to install Java (or BlueJ, jGrasp or anything for that matter) on any public computer anywhere on campus. These software tools are already installed in STT 488 - Plonsky Lab, and in some other labs on campus. Attempting to install such software in a public lab may jeopardize the functionality of those systems and be a nuisance to many.

Part IV – Installing BlueJ on your own personal computer



Using the link on the course web page (under Java-related links), download BlueJ. Note that there are also links for “documentation” and “installation instructions” which you may find useful in addition to the description given here.

As with Java, I recommend you first save the downloaded file before you run it. Although I recommend you use the defaults there is one exception here. Instead of installing BlueJ in the given default location, I recommend for the sake of consistency that you place it in C:\Program Files\BlueJ instead.



At this point BlueJ should be installed and ready to use.

Part V – Testing BlueJ on your own personal computer

To test BlueJ begin running it and select New Project from under the Project menu. Rather than take the default location for this project, I recommend that you place it in a folder where you plan to do your course work. So in the following screen shot notice that I have a folder named C134 and have created a new project named FirstProject.



Click on the button labeled New Class to create a new class and name it FirstClass.

Then click the button labeled Compile.



Right click on the FirstClass icon and highlight the new FirstClass item.

Accept the default name, and click on OK.



Right click on the icon for the new object (appears in red in the lower left) and highlight to select the String toString() item (from the inherited from Object sub-menu). (The screenshot below does not agree exactly with this description. Don’t worry about that.)

A pop-up should appear as shown in the following screen shot (although the value displayed will probably be something like “FirstClass@d1c778” rather than “0”). Although it may not be much, this process demonstrates that both Java and BlueJ have been installed and are working correctly.



Part VI – Testing Java and BlueJ in STT 488 -The Plonsky Lab:

The computing resources in room STT 488 (The Department of Computing Sciences Plonsky Lab) have Java, BlueJ, jGrasp (along with Eclipse and lots of other such software) installed and this lab may be used for work in the course. STT 488 is not a public computing lab; rather, it is a lab for students taking Computing Sciences courses only, and as such a separate authorization is required to use these resources.

You may think that since you have your own personal computer there is no need for you to ever use this lab and so performing this activity is a waste of time. Well, I don’t see it that way. First of all, you are here to learn and so having this opportunity to apply concepts in a slightly different computing environment (with a potentially different set of details) is a worthwhile activity. Secondly, it may come to pass that your personal computer may become unavailable to you for some reason at some time during the semester; use your imagination to think of the variety of possibilities. If this were to happen, the semester would not stop and neither would the deadlines for assignments in this course; you will be expected to use the available resources instead. So, this activity gives you the opportunity to learn and to become prepared.

Every student registered for this course has an authorization (i.e., user name and password) allowing them to make use of the resources in this lab. This authorization is a distinct instance of the same “User Name” and “Password” you already have as a UofS student. In particular, your user name is something like smithj2 and your initial password is your “R number” (with a capital ‘R’). Our department’s System Administrator, Mr. Bill Gunshannon handles these authorizations, and if you are unable to log into the computers in the Plonsky Lab, let me know and I will double check the details with him.

1. Log onto one of the computers. If prompted, change your password from the given one to one of your own. (Note that the password you choose applies only to the machines in this lab (STT 488).)



2. Bring up “My Computer” from the “Start Menu” for the purpose of checking for a “mapped network drive”. If a network drive is mounted for you then it will appear as drive “Z:\”, or “Y:\”, or possibly “N:\”. If such a drive appears then check for the presence of any files stored there. Note that you may have to provide the same user name and password at this point to access the drive. In the dialog box, the username may be prefaced by “\\server9\”, but that is fine.

3. If “My Computer” does not show a network drive then you may want to “map” it yourself in order to gain access. To do this, select “Map Network Drive…” from the “Tools” pull-down menu. Select “Browse” and select a drive such as “Z:”, then enter “\\server9\userid” in the “Folder:” area. Note that “userid” is the User Name. Finally, make sure that “Reconnect at logon” is checked, then click “Finish”. Successfully completing this process should provide you access to the additional file space of this mapped network drive every time you log on to one of the computers in the department’s network.

4. Locate BlueJ either on the desktop or among the installed programs, and redo the activities described in Part V.

5. Finally, when you are finished using the computer in the lab, be very sure to log off. You can do this using the “Start” menu or by entering CTRL-ALT-DEL. Note that not properly logging off leaves the machine in a state that could allow the next user to access your files stored on the network drive and even possibly utilize your authorization in your name to do unsavory things. See the University of Scranton’s Code of Responsible Computing (at http://matrix.scranton.edu/informationresources/re_code_of_responsible_computing.shtml) and be careful.

Part VII – Submitting a message and your Background Description

The purpose of these activities is to get everyone started doing something and to prepare our computers and ourselves for the work we will be doing. On the course web page in the section on Assignments next to the link for this write-up is a link labeled “Submit/Review”. Clicking on this link takes you to a page with the following layout:


http://matrix.scranton.edu/informationresources/re_code_of_responsible_computing.shtml

http://matrix.scranton.edu/informationresources/re_code_of_responsible_computing.shtml


This will be the standard form to be used to submit work on the assignments for this course. The form requires a “Title” and something simple such as “HW #0” is recommended here. The “Message” area allows you to enter a brief narrative, but it has limited functionality. For example, there is no spell checking and in fact you must enter “hard returns” in order to format lines for readability.

For this assignment, compose a brief message indicating the degree of success you’ve had installing and testing the software. Are you at a point where you can compile and run the given Java program? Were you able to open and use BlueJ? If so then you are ready for Assignment 1 when it comes and that’s really all I want and need to know from you at this point.

You are to use the “File” fields with their accompanying “Browse” buttons to “attach” the MS Word file you prepared in Part II. This will be the only file you should attach.

Note that this simple form, although appearing similar to an email message, is functionally different. The title, message, and files you submit are transferred to me and placed in a folder for which I am owner. These files and any files I may add to the folder (which is the means I typically use to provide feedback to you on your work) are available for you to “review” online at any time. In this sense, reviewing means that you are able to “view” and download but not modify these files. Be assured that these folders containing your submissions and my feedback are stored in a protected way as to be accessible by only me and you (through the authorization you activated when you registered).

Good luck, and I will be looking for your submissions.


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