Thursday, 1 January 2015

CS1010E - Programming Methodology

Type: Core Module
Difficulty: Easy
Workload: Light (Subjective)
Lecturer(s): Dr Henry Chia
Assessment: Assessed Labs, Class participation, Midterms and Finals

This module has a very very steep bell curve, especially nowadays where more and more people have background in programming. This course teaches you to program in C. Topics covered are the bare basics of programming, arrays, pointers and up to recursion. (It's okay if you don't know what these are as of now). As for me, I had been participating in C programming competitions since secondary school, so this module was a breeze for me. However, if you do not have prior programming background, I would suggest that you should get started today (yes, NOW!). Either consult online websites or you may contact me (refer to the sidebar on the right).

There are tutorial sessions which participation marks are awarded. Every alternate week are assessed labs and you would be given a task to solve individually within a certain time limit. These labs are open book, however the questions are usually "killers" for many. I've heard numerous people groaning as they retold the horror stories in the labs. Every other weeks would be guided labs where the lab instructors would guide you and provide assistance to whoever who requires help. The guided labs are purely optional and ungraded, but the assessed labs are graded and constitutes a fair chunk of weightage.

* A Hint: Start preparing early, and score well for the assessments which are easy to score (i.e. class participation)

For the finals, it constitutes of a couple of MCQ and open ended questions where you would have to write your own code in. Dr. Henry Chia loves to play with the weightages of the various components, and assessment papers varies in structure every year. Thus, it's just important to score for the easier components to make up for any other "killer assessments".

After all, as Dr. Chia quoted, everyone can program. It's just whether you can learn to program in 13 weeks or not.

Expected Grade: A+
Achieved Grade: A+ 

2 comments:

  1. Hi, I am an incoming Electrical engineering student, do you have any particular resources in mind for learning C programming ?Is the K and R book good and up to date ? Thank You :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hey, there are many resources online to pick up basic C programming. I've never heard of the K&R book, so im unable to advise about it.

      Delete