Country of the Ngunnawal and Ngambri People

Hi, I'm Charles!

I’m a computer scientist, and a musician…

Course Introduction

• course overview
• assessment
• people
• policies

Who is this course for?

Anyone who wants to know:

• how their computer really calculates 1+1
• what happens in your computer when you run a high level program
• how and why computer science connects to the physical world

Who owns a smartphone?

the microbit course!

What background knowledge is expected?

• basic programming
• basic arithmetic, logic, gates
• development tools: VSCode and git

Lecture schedule

What should you expect in lectures?

We’ll have:

• slides
• live coding
• questions over chat

You should also read the lecture page.

Labs

Labs are the most important part of the course!

You are expected to attend all the lab sessions

See the lab page and labs FAQ for more details.

Communication

How do we communicate with each other in this course?

• the forum: quickest and best place to get help
• the website: lectures, labs, assessments, resources
• your email: important individual messages

Make sure you check all regularly

It’s all in the communication policy

Assessment

(See the assessment page on the website!)

Resources

There’s no set text for this course, all the material will be provided on or linked from the course website.

You should look at the books & links page

Academic integrity

• read the course policy
• assignments are strictly individual
• there’s lots of great text & code out there on the web (which is great!)
• if you find some code you want to use, you must clearly indicate which bits of code aren’t yours, where you got them, and what licence you’re using them under
• do NOT submit code that isn’t yours without clearly indicating the above.
• do NOT expect marks for code you didn’t write.
• read the FAQ

Academic integrity and Plagiarism

Source: ANU Academic Skills and Learning

What I expect from you

I expect that you:

• regularly read the course website & check forum/email
• engage with the course material early
• attend your labs & get to know your tutor
• act with integrity

What you can expect from me

If you do this, I promise to:

• give you help when you ask ahead of time
• provide a clear, well organised course website with all the information you need (so make sure you read it!)
• care about you & support you in your learning journey wherever you’re at

But if you don’t engage, then I can’t support you. You’ve been warned!

Quiz: where do I find the...

assessment timeline?

lecture slides?

lab content?

late submission/extension/academic misconduct policies?

Programming languages

This course mainly uses ARMv7 assembly language.

You’ll do a little bit of C (one step above assembly!)

It’s useful to illustrate how this assembly code relates to other languages, and we’ll use lots of different examples in the slides.

Questions