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Everyone:

Welcome to CSE 20289 Systems Programming, which (as the syllabus states) is a course that "introduces students to the Unix programming environment where they will explore various command line utilities, files, processes, memory management, system calls, data structures, networking, and concurrency". What this means is that you will first learn how to effectively utilize a modern Unix programming environment and then you will study how to develop applications that take advantage of system level abstractions such as files, processes, and sockets.

Course Overview

Last semester, most of you took the CSE 20311 Fundamentals of Computing course where you learned how to program in the C language. After playing the Game of Life, generating anagrams, and building fractals, you should be capable of programming in a compiled language using conditional statements, loops, and functions. Moreover, you should be somewhat familiar with strings, arrays, and those crazy pointers.

In this course, we will build on this foundational knowledge by exploring the Unix programming environment in order to get a better idea of how a computer works and how to build applications that utilize different aspects of conventional computing systems. The semester can be broken down into the following units:

  1. Unit 01: Bourne Shell

    First, we will begin by learning how to utilize the Unix shell and then how to compose multiple Unix utilities into pipelines and shell scripts while taking advantage of regular expressions.

  2. Unit 02: Python

    Next, we will explore processing and manipulating data using Python. Along the way, we will discuss how to exploit the functional programming paradigm to efficiently perform parallel computing.

  3. Unit 03: C

    Finally, we will descend down the software stack to C and discuss memory management as well as revisiting pointers, arrays, strings, and studying some data structures. We will then build our own Unix applications that take advantage of system level abstractions such as files and sockets through the use of system calls. All of this exploration will culminate in a multi-core HTTP client.

Moreover, throughout the course, we will frequently reflect on the wisdom and power of the Unix Philosophy:

  1. Write programs that do one thing and do it well.

  2. Write programs to work together.

  3. Write programs to handle text streams, because that is a universal interface.

Each week there will be a Reading assignment meant to give you a context and reference into what we will be covering that upcoming week and a Homework assignment that will provide you an opportunity apply the material in (hopefully) interesting ways. Of course, there are three exams to assess your mastery of the material.

TL;DR

For this week, you need to read about using the command line and Git, and then setup your GitHub repository. There is nothing to submit.

Readings

The readings for Friday, February 5 are:

  1. The Linux Command Line

    • Chapter 1 - What is the Shell?
    • Chapter 2 - Navigation
    • Chapter 3 - Exploring the System
    • Chapter 4 - Manipulating Files and Directories
    • Chapter 5 - Working With Commands

  2. Git Handbook

  3. Pro Git

    • Chapter 1 - Getting Started
    • Chapter 2 - Git Basics
    • Chapter 3 - Git Branching

The focus of the readings is to review the basics of using the Unix shell, which most of you used in CSE 20311 Fundamentals of Computing last semester, and to introduce you to Git, which we will be using throughout the semester.

In addition to reading the above chapters, it is recommended that you work through the following tutorials:

  1. Command Line Crash Course

    This is a tutorial on using the command line interface on various operating systems (you should focus on the Unix shell).

  2. Learn Git Branching

    This is an interactive tutorial on branching in Git.

The Hands-on Imperative

To get the most out of your reading, you should be typing commands into a terminal and playing around with the things you reading.

Passively reading will not be as fruitful as actively reading and trying out things you are exploring.

Additional Resources

The following are additional resources that you may find useful:

Unix Shell

Git

Tasks

Normally, you would have quiz to complete after each reading. For this initial reading, however, you only need do the following:

  1. Join the class Slack channel.

  2. Create your own private assignments Git repository on GitHub.

  3. Clone your private assignments Git repository to your local computer or a student machine.

Task 1: Slack

For communication outside of our meeting time, we will be using Slack, which is a real-time chat platform similar to Discord. Your first task is to create a ND-CSE Slack account (if you have not done so already) and join the #cse-20289-sp21 channel:

https://nd-cse.slack.com/messages/cse-20289-sp21/

Slack Channel

There is a class mailing list, but most day-to-day communication (including office hours and homework help) should take place on Slack. Therefore, you should check this channel regularly as it is the primary means of communication for the course.

Task 2: GitHub

All of your work in this class will be submitted to GitHub using git. Your second task is to setup your GitHub assignments repository by doing the following:

  1. Sign-in or create a GitHub account if you do not already have one.

    https://github.com/join

    You may associate this account with either your Notre Dame or personal email address. It is up to you.

  2. Fork the class assignments repository from the following template:

    https://classroom.github.com/a/30qI-7ZU

    This will create a private cse-20289-sp21-assignments-$USERNAME repository under your own account and linked to the nd-cse-20289-sp21 organization.

GitHub Repository

The assignments repository will be used for your individual reading and homework assignments. It must be kept private and only shared with the instructional staff.

Task 3: Student Machines

While you are free to use any machine you wish to do your work, the department provides a set of student machines that you can login to and do remote work in an environment crafted for the course. The following steps allow you to clone the assigments you just created to any machine of your choosing.

  1. Clone your git repository to your local machine (or the student machines):

    # Example of cloning GitHub assignments repository to local or student machine
    
    $ git clone https://github.com/nd-cse-20289-sp21/cse-20289-sp21-assignments-$USERNAME.git
    Cloning into 'cse-20289-sp21-assignments-pbui'...
    Username for 'https://github.com': pbui
    Password for 'https://pbui@github.com': 
    remote: Enumerating objects: 100, done.
    remote: Counting objects: 100% (100/100), done.
    remote: Compressing objects: 100% (35/35), done.
    remote: Total 100 (delta 18), reused 85 (delta 8), pack-reused 0
    Receiving objects: 100% (100/100), 9.04 KiB | 0 bytes/s, done.
    Resolving deltas: 100% (18/18), done.
    
  2. Edit the README.md file in your assignments repository such that the Name and NetID fields are completed (i.e. replace "Domer McDomerson" and "dmcdomer"). You should commit your change and then push them to GitHub.

    # Example on editing README in assignments repository and pushing changes to GitHub
    
    $ cd cse-20289-sp21-assignments-$USERNAME   # Go into the assignments directory
    
    $ nano README.md                            # Edit the README.md file
    
    $ git add README.md                         # Mark the file for recording
    
    $ git commit -m "Update README"             # Record the change
    [master c550fa1] Update README
    1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
    
    $ git push                                  # Send your local changes to GitHub
    Password for 'https://pbui@github.com':
    

Student Machines

As a reminder, students in this class have access to the following student machines:

The following is a video demonstration of the process of cloning your GitHub repository and committing your first change.

Tasks

Once you have setup Slack, GitHub, and have a working development environment on your local machine or on a student machine, then you have completed all the necessary tasks for this reading assignment.