Everyone:

Welcome to CSE 30872 Programming Challenges, which (as the syllabus states) is a "course that revolves around solving brain-teaser and puzzle-type problems that often appear in programming contests, online challenges, and job interviews". What this means is that we will be studying common data structures, algorithms, and programming techniques that are useful in tackling a variety of problems.

Additionally, this semester we will also learn about different software development techniques such as debugging, testing, profiling, and packaging.

Course Overview

Last semester, many of you took the Data Structures course where you learned about the properties and characteristics of different data structures (and perhaps you even implemented a few). The focus of this class, however, is not in the construction of these data structures, but rather their application. This means we will focus on when to use these data structures and algorithms and how to utilize them effectively rather than what they are. In concrete terms, we will not be implementing say a hash table; instead we will use it to solve a variety of problems.

Following the Hands-On Imperative, you will have the opportunity to put the material we discuss in class into practice via numerous weekly programming challenges (usually 2 a week). Along with these challenges will be reading assignments to ensure you have a context or background knowledge for what we will be discussing in class. As with last semester in Systems Programming, the reading assignments will be automatically graded.

In fact all of your assignments will be automatically graded by dredd via the continuous integration system provided by GitLab. As you may have experienced in your internship this summer, testing is an important part of software engineering and we will therefore explore various aspects of software development including debugging, profiling, testing, packaging, and more throughout the semester.

Although each class will involve some amount of lecture, there will also be a lot of in-class activities and hands-on learning. Because of this, participation is a component of your grade and you are expected to come to class regularly and on-time.

Fortunately, however, there are no exams in this class. Instead, we will have two in-class programming contests where you will get to work in groups of 3 (similar to the ACM Programming Contest). Likewise, you will also have to participate in one external programming contest such as the regional ACM Programming Contest or any other competitive programming event (online is allowed).

Task 1: GitLab

For this week, your first task is to setup your GitLab repository by doing the following:

1. Fork the class assignments repository: CSE-30872-FA19-Assignments

   

2. Configure the Settings of your repository such that:

   • Under General > Project description (optional), record your name and netid.

     

   • Under Permissions > Project visibility, select Private.

     

3. Add the instructional staff to your repository:

   • Under Project members, select the Add member tab.

   • Under Project members > Select member to invite, enter in the following accounts:

     1. Peter Bui (@pbui)
     2. Samuel Battalio (@sambattalio)
     3. Ana Luisa Lamberto (@allamberto)
     4. Bailey Logan (@bclogan)
     5. Seun Odun-Ayo (@dodunayo)
     6. Richard Stefanik (@rickstefanik)

     7. Tina Wu (@tinawu_lbj)

   • Under Project members > Choose a role permission, select Maintainer.

   • Under Project members > Access expiration date, select December 31, 2019 (2019-12-31).

   

4. Once this is done, you can clone your git repository to your local machine:

   $ git clone https://gitlab.com/$USERNAME/cse-30872-fa19-assignments.git

   Note: If you have not done so already, you should consider setting up SSH Keys on GitLab to enable password-less pushing and pulling.

Task 2: Reading

The readings for Wednesday, August 28 are

1. Competitive Programmer's Handbook

   • Chapter 1 Introduction

   • Chapter 2 Time Complexity

2. Git Branching

   Consider doing the Learning Git Branching tutorial if you are not familiar with branching.

Note: Don't worry if you don't get the readings done by Wednesday, as this is the first week of class.

Task 3: Quiz

Once you have done the readings, answer the following Reading 00 Quiz questions:

To submit your answers, you will need create a answers.json or answers.yaml file in the reading00 folder of your assignments repository:

1. For this class, you must use a separate git branch for each assignment. This means that the work for each reading and challenge must be done in a separate branch. To create and checkout a new branch, you can do the following:

   $ git checkout master         # Make sure we are in master branch
   $ git pull --rebase           # Make sure we are up-to-date with GitLab repository
   
   $ git checkout -b reading00   # Create reading00 branch and check it out

   Once you do the above, you should see the following output for the git-branch command:

   $ git branch
     master
   * reading00

   The * indicates that we are currently on the reading00 branch.

2. You can either hand-write the answers file using your favorite text editor or you can use the online form to generate the JSON data.

   A hand-written answers.yaml may look like the following:

   q1:     [python,perl,ruby]
   q2:     [n2,nf,nlogn,1,n,sqrtn,logn]
   q3:     n
   q4:     n

   The equivalent answers.json generated using the online form may look like the following:

   {
     "q1": [
       "python",
       "perl",
       "ruby"
     ],
     "q2": [
       "n2",
       "nf",
       "nlogn",
       "1",
       "n",
       "sqrtn",
       "logn"
     ],
     "q3": "n",
     "q4": "n"
   }

   You may use either format. To determine which symbols correspond to which response, take a look at the Reading 00 Quiz file.

   To check your answers, you can use the provided .scripts/submit.py script:

   $ cd reading00                        # Go into reading00 folder
   $ $EDITOR answers.json                # Edit your answers.json file
   
   $ ../.scripts/submit.py               # Submit reading00
   Submitting reading00 assignment ...
   Submitting reading00 quiz ...
         Q1 0.14
         Q2 0.14
         Q3 0.00
         Q4 0.00
      Score 0.29

   This script will submit your reading00/answers.json file to dredd, which is the automated grading system. dredd will take your answers and return to you a score as shown above. Each reading is worth 2.0 points.

   Note: You may submit your quiz answers as many times as you want; dredd does not keep track of who submits what or how many times. It simply returns a score.

3. Once you have your answers file, you need to add, commit the file, and push your commits to GitLab:

   $ git add answers.json                # Add answers.json to staging area
   $ git commit -m "Reading 00: Done"    # Commit work
   
   $ git push -u origin reading00        # Push branch to GitLab

   Note: You may edit and commit changes to your branch as many times as you wish. Just make sure all of your work goes in the appropriate branch and then perform a git push when you are done.

4. When you are ready for your final submission, you need to create a merge request via the GitLab interface:

   • First, go to your repository's Branches page and then press the Merge Request button for the appropriate branch:

     

   • Next, click on the "Change branches" link so you can set the Target branch to your own repository (rather than the class repository).

     

     Failure to select your own repository will lead to you unintentionally sharing your answers to the class, so please make sure you select your repository and not the class one.

   • Finally, assign the merge request to the appropriate TA (reference the Reading 00 TA List) and submit the merge request.

     

   Every commit on GitLab will automatically submit your quiz or code to dredd and the results of each run is displayed in the merge request as a Pipeline task. To view the results of the submission, click on the Pipeline number and then the test button. You should then be able to see the results of the automated test, which should look something like this:

   

Once you have made the merge request, the TA can verify your work and provide feedback via the discussion form inside the merge request. If necessary, you can update your submission by simply commit and pushing to the appropriate branch; the merge request will automatically be updated to match your latest work.

When all work is complete, the TA will merge your branch and close the merge request.