CS 201 - Spring 2025. 1/22/2025.

Welcome to CS 201!

Video of the Day

Stealing a lick from Jacob Collier and putting into my back pocket submitted by Samuel Vargas.

It shows a musician taking one of Jacob Collier's licks, transcribing it, and reproducing it on their own instrument at the end. I thought this would be a good analogy for the creation of Racket, as it uses many of the features of its predecessors (namely Scheme) and incorporates them into its workflow, adding its own unique flavor along the way.

I hereby solicit suggestions for the video of the day. Please email me your ideas with explanations. Selected entries will win 5 homework points. If your video is played at the beginning of class, you must also briefly explain something about the video and something about yourself - in person.

Logical problem of the day

(define (double v)
   ((if (string? v) string-append +) v v))

What is the result of (double 5) ? (From Racket Guide, Section 2.2)

https://pollev.com/slade You may also download the app to your phone. Use the "slade" poll id.

Top Ten Reasons to Learn Racket!

Number 8: Three reasons: recursion, recursion, recursion.

Canvas Quiz of the Day (need daily password)

Most days, there will be a simple canvas quiz related to the lecture. You need a password to activate the quiz, which I will provide in class. These quizzes will count toward your class participation grade. The quiz is available only during class.

Click for today's quiz.

Note: the collaboration quiz is separate. It coincides with the first homework assignment.

Lecture 4: Racket.

I have office hours Wednesdays from 4-6 pm, on zoom, id 459 434 2854.

ULA office hours are found at https://csofficehours.org/CS201/schedule. Sign up via the queue.

If you're thinking of taking CPSC 201, please do the following.

Complete this online Student Information form.
Get a course account for CPSC 201 on the Zoo. When you register for this class, your course account should be created within one hour or so of signing up.
Start the homework assignment: [Assignments]. hw1 is now available.
Familiarize yourself with the Zoo computers with classmates or ULAs or on your own using the Zoo tutorial, Spring 2014 edition. We will discuss UNIX in class in the coming weeks and throughout the term. The compiled staff solutions to the problem sets are available for execution on the zoo. There is also an interactive UNIX tutorial available on the zoo.
(Optional.) Download and install DrRacket on your computer (Racket) and familiarize yourself with it (Choose language: "Use the language declared in the source", #lang racket. Then press the Run button to actually change the language.) If you don't want to install and run DrRacket on your machine, you may run it in person or remotely using your Zoo account.

Announcements

In hw0, you are asked to read a recent issue of the Communications of the Association for Computing Machinery (CACM). The ACM is the major professional society for the broad field of computer science. I have been a member for 50 years now. If you intend to pursue a career in computer science, either in industry or academia, you should join. They have a special student membership rate of $19 a year. See https://services.acm.org/public/fall/ and select ACM Student Membership. If you sign up (or are already a member), I will award you 5 homework points. Just send me proof.

Racket.

Racket.html (jupyter) Collatz.

Getting to know UNIX

UNIX Introduction

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