Using these Lab Exercises

Please keep the following things in mind as you do the lab exercises in this course:

Make it a practice of bringing your reference materials to the lab period (e.g., you text and lecture notes). The lab exercises reinforce and extend those materials and it’s hard to remember all the details (even for computing professionals!).
Get used to asking questions. Ask the students around you; ask the lab assistants; ask your instructor; raise a question in on-line video chat. (Computing professionals are not islands!)
Experiment with your tools. Experimentation is the best way to learn how to use them. (We won’t let you break anything!)
The goal of the lab exercises is understanding not survival. Don’t just record the answers, make sure that you understand them!

Operating Systems

To design and implement algorithms on a computer, you must first know how to control the basic operations of the computer. This is one the fundamental purposes of the operating system. Study the tutorial appropriate for the operating system that you will be using in these labs. It is important for craftspeople to know their tools well, so we suggest that you at least review the material even if you’ve used the system in the past.

If you’ve been instructed to work in teams, please revert to working as individuals for this exercise (only).

Exercise 1.1

Do the following things on your development system:

Verify that you do not have a directory named computing (it should have been completely removed at the end of the UNIX/Linix introduction).
Create a sub-directory for this course named cs108;
Create a sub-directory inside your cs108 directory called lab01
Create a text file using Processing that contains:
- your full name,
- why you are taking this class, and
- your major (or ones you are considering) together with an explanation of why you have chosen (or are considering) that major.
Everything in this file should be contained within a multi-line comment. Save this (valid) Processing program in your new lab01 directory as aboutMe. (Note: Processing will create a directory called aboutMe that contains the file aboutMe.pde.)

Practice Checking In

Submit your solution to this lab exercise using your appropriate submission environment:

If you are instructed to move directly onto lab exercise 2, then be sure to leave open the option of submitting further files before moving on to lab 2.