CSE 20289 is a required Computer Science and Engineering course at the University of Notre Dame that explores the fundamentals of computing systems. This course 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. Examining these topics will enable students to become familiar and comfortable with the lower level aspects of computing, while providing the foundation for further study in subsequent systems courses such as computer architecture and operating systems.

Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to:

  1. Utilize commands to navigate filesystems, manipulate files, manage processes, and explore system and network resources.

  2. Compose shell scripts that combine common Unix commands with shell syntax to automate tasks.

  3. Construct regular expressions and software pipelines to filter and process a variety of datasets.

  4. Employ development tools to debug, profile, and test software applications.

  5. Build and install software from source distributions or using package managers.

  6. Compose Python scripts that employ data structures and libraries to process and manipulate data.

  7. Construct C programs that use low-level functions or system calls to allocate memory, manipulate files and directories, and communicate over sockets.

  8. Discuss the core tenets of the "Unix Philosophy" and how it is applied to modern software development.

Class Information

Lecture
M/W/F 12:50 PM - 1:40 PM
Location
101 DeBartolo Hall
Zoom Meeting
958 4190 7025
Mailing List (Class)
sp25-cse-20289-01-group@nd.edu
Mailing List (Staff)
sp25-cse-20289-01-staff-list@nd.edu
Slack
#cse-20289-sp25
GitHub
nd-cse-20289-sp25

Instructor

Instructor
Peter Bui (pbui@nd.edu)
Office Hours
M/W/F 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM, T/TH 1:30 PM - 3:00 PM, and by appointment
Office Location
326D Cushing Hall

Help Protocol

  1. Think
  2. Slack
  3. Think
  4. Zoom
  5. Think
  6. Email

Teaching Assistants

Teaching Assistant
Genesis Argueta (gargueta@nd.edu)
Teaching Assistant
Walker Bagley (wbagley@nd.edu)
Teaching Assistant
Carlos Basurto (cbasurto@nd.edu)
Teaching Assistant
Daniel Blittschau (dblittsc@nd.edu)
Teaching Assistant
Luke Cao (lcao3@nd.edu)
Teaching Assistant
Carolina Carpenetti (ccarpene@nd.edu)
Teaching Assistant
Catherine Healy (chealy5@nd.edu)
Teaching Assistant
Mayleen Liu (mliu5@nd.edu)
Teaching Assistant
Victoria Mendez (vmendez@nd.edu)
Teaching Assistant
Sofia Nelson (snelso24@nd.edu)
Teaching Assistant
Jack O'Connor (joconn25@nd.edu)
Teaching Assistant
Alyssa Riter (ariter@nd.edu)
Teaching Assistant
Jakub Wielgus (jwielgus@nd.edu)

Office Hours

Unit Date Topics Assignments
Introduction Mon 01/13 Syllabus, Unix Programming Environment Slides 00 Slides 01 Panopto Reading 00
Wed 01/15 Git Slides 02 Panopto
Fri 01/17 Files Slides 03 Panopto
Unit 01: Bourne Shell
Using the Shell Mon 01/20 Martin Luther King Day
Wed 01/22 Processes, I/O Redirection Slides 04 Slides 05 Reading 01
Fri 01/24 Networking Slides 06
Sat 01/25 Command Line Adventure Homework 01
Shell Scripting Mon 01/27 Variables, Command Substitution, Matching Reading 02
Wed 01/29 Control Flow, Command Line Arguments
Fri 01/31 Pipelines
Sat 02/01 Meeting the Oracle Homework 02
Text Filtering Mon 02/03 Regular Expressions Reading 03
Wed 02/05 Filters
Fri 02/07 Filters
Sat 02/08 Weathering with Zipcodes Homework 03
Exam 01 Mon 02/10 Review Reading 04
Wed 02/12 Exam 01
Fri 02/14 Python Scripting
Unit 02: Python
Python Scripting Mon 02/17 Functions, Data Structures, Tests Reading 05
Wed 02/19 I/O, Processes, Requests
Fri 02/21 Regular Expressions, CSV, JSON
Sat 02/22 Cutit, Watchit Homework 04
Functional Programming Mon 02/24 Higher Order Functions, List Comprehensions Reading 06
Wed 02/26 Iterators, Generators
Fri 02/28 Concurrency
Sat 03/01 SearX, Hulk Homework 05
Exam 02 Mon 03/03 Review Reading 07
Wed 03/05 Exam 02
Fri 03/07 Compiling and Building
Spring Break
Unit 03: C
Pointers, Arrays, Strings Mon 03/17 Libraries, Pointers, Arrays Reading 08
Wed 03/19 Strings, Debugging (GDB, Valgrind)
Fri 03/21 Data Representation
Sat 03/22 Translateit Homework 06
Memory Management Mon 03/24 Memory Allocation Reading 09
Wed 03/26 Structs, Unions
Fri 03/28 Linked Data Structures
Sat 03/29 Uniqueit Homework 07
Exam 03 Mon 03/31 Review Reading 10
Wed 04/02 Exam 03
Fri 04/04 System Calls
Unit 04: System Calls
File System, I/O Mon 04/07 File System Reading 11
Wed 04/09 I/O
Fri 04/11 Processes
Sat 04/12 Findit Homework 08
Processes Mon 04/14 Signals Reading 12
Wed 04/16 Client/Server, URLs, Sockets
Fri 04/18 Easter
Networking Mon 04/21 Easter
Wed 04/23 HTTP Client Reading 13
Fri 04/25 HTTP Server
Sat 04/26 Timeit, Curlit Homework 09
Exam 04 Mon 04/28 VPS
Wed 04/30 Review
Mon 05/05 Exam 04

Coursework

Component Points
Readings Weekly reading assignments. 10 × 3
Homeworks Weekly homework assignments. 9 × 10
Exams Exams covering each unit. 40, 40, 40, 60
Total 300

Grading

Grade Points Grade Points Grade Points
A 280-300 A- 270-279
B+ 260-269 B 250-259 B- 240-249
C+ 230-239 C 220-229 C- 210-219
D 195-209 F 0-194

Due Dates

All Readings and Homeworks are to be submitted to your own private GitHub repository. Unless specified otherwise:

  • Readings are due by noon on the Monday of the assigned week.
  • Homeworks are due by noon on the Saturday of the assigned week.

Policies

Participation

Students are expected to attend and contribute regularly in class. This means answering questions in class, participating in discussions, and helping other students.

Foreseeable absences should be discussed with the instructor ahead of time.

Community

Recalling one of the tenets of the Hacker Ethic:

Hackers should be judged by their hacking, not criteria such as degrees, age, race, sex, or position.

Students are expected to be respectful of their fellow classmates and the instructional staff.

Students with Disabilities

Any student who has a documented disability and is registered with Disability Services should speak with the professor as soon as possible regarding accommodations. Students who are not registered should contact the Office of Disabilities.

Academic Honesty

Any academic misconduct in this course is considered a serious offense, and the strongest possible academic penalties will be pursued for such behavior. Students may discuss high-level ideas with other students, but at the time of implementation (i.e. programming), each person must do his/her own work. Use of the Internet as a reference is allowed but directly copying code or other information is cheating. It is cheating to copy, to allow another person to copy, all or part of an exam or a assignment, or to fake program output. It is also a violation of the Undergraduate Academic Code of Honor to observe and then fail to report academic dishonesty. You are responsible for the security and integrity of your own work.

Late Work

In the case of a serious illness or other excused absence, as defined by university policies, coursework submissions will be accepted late by the same number of days as the excused absence.

Otherwise, there is an automatic penalty of 25% late penalty for assignments turned in 12 hours pass the specified deadline.

Note, there is an allowance for self-service extensions as described below.

No assignments will be accepted after the last day of class without the permission of the instructor.

Classroom Recording

This course will be recorded using Zoom and Panopto. This system allows us to automatically record and distribute lectures to you in a secure environment. You can watch these recordings on your computer, tablet, or smartphone. In the course Canvas, look for the "Panopto" tool on the left hand side of the course.

Because we will be recording in the classroom, your questions and comments may be recorded. Recordings typically only capture the front of the classroom, but if you have any concerns about your voice or image being recorded please speak to me to discuss your concerns. Except for faculty and staff who require access, no content will be shared with individuals outside of your course without your permission.

These recordings are jointly copyrighted by the University of Notre Dame and your instructor. Posting them to other websites (including YouTube, Facebook, SnapChat, etc.) or elsewhere without express, written permission may result in disciplinary action and possible civil prosecution.

Self-Service Extensions

For Homeworks, a student may take advantage of up to three separate self-service extensions, each of which would allow a student to submit one assignment up to 48 hours pass the original deadline for no penalty.

To take advantage of this self-service extension, the student must make a note in the README.md corresponding to the assignment that they are taking the extension and include it in their Pull Request. They do not need to ask for permission ahead of time.

Note, there are no extensions for Readings. Instead, students should be aware that they can drop three Reading grades.

CSE Guide to the Honor Code

For the assignments in this class, you are allowed to consult printed and online resources and to discuss the class material with other students. You may also consult AI Tools such as CoPilot or ChatGPT for help explaining concepts, debugging problems, or as a reference. Viewing or consulting solutions, such as those from other students, previous semesters, or generated by AI Tools is never allowed.

Likewise, you may copy small and trivial snippets from books, online sources, and AI Tools as long as you cite them properly. However, you may not copy solutions or significant portions of code from other students or online sources, nor may you generate solutions via AI Tools.

Finally, when preparing for exams in this class, you may not access exams from previous semesters, nor may you look at or copy solutions from other current or former students.

Resources Solutions
Consulting Allowed Not Allowed
Copying Cite Not Allowed

See the CSE Guide to the Honor Code for definitions of the above terms and specific examples of what is allowed and not allowed when consulting resources.

If you are unclear about whether certain forms of consultation or common work are acceptable or what the standards for citation are, you responsible for consulting your instructor.

If an instructor sees behavior that is, in his judgement, academically dishonest, he is required to file either an Honor Code Violation Report or a formal report to the College of Engineering Honesty Committee.

Textbooks

The Linux Command Line

William Shotts Online Version

Automate the Boring Stuff with Python

Al Sweigart Online Version

Dive into Systems

Suzanne Matthews, Tia Newhall, Kevin Webb Online Version

Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces

Remzi Arpaci-Dusseau, Andrea Arpaci-Dusseau Online Version