CSE 30872 is an elective course in the Computer Science and Engineering program at the University of Notre Dame. This course encourages the development of practical programming and problem solving skills through extensive practice and guided learning. The bulk of the class revolves around solving brain-teaser and puzzle-type problems that often appear in programming contests, online challenges, and job interviews. Additionally, basic software engineering practices such as planning, debugging, testing, and source code management may be discussed.

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

  1. Parse a variety of inputs and model problems.

  2. Utilize appropriate data structures to represent and solve problems.

  3. Implement common problem solving techniques and algorithms.

  4. Employ modern software development methods and tools.

  5. Debug and test code within an automated testing environment.

Class Information

Lecture
M/W 7:30 PM - 9:00 PM EST
Mailing List
su23-cse-30872-01-group@nd.edu
Zoom Meeting
975 6042 7170
Slack Channel
#cse-30872-su23
GitHub Organization
nd-cse-30872-su23

Instructor

Instructor
Peter Bui (pbui@nd.edu)
Virtual Office Hours
T/TH 7:30 - 9:00 PM EST, and by appointment

Teaching Assistant

Teaching Assistant
Anna Klempay (aklempay@nd.edu)
Virtual Office Hours
T/TH 7:30 - 9:00 PM EST, and by appointment

Help Protocol

  1. Think
  2. Slack
  3. Think
  4. Email
  5. Think
Unit Date Topics Assignments
Orientation Mon 05/29 Orientation Slides 00 Reading 00
I/O, Sequence Containers Mon 06/05 I/O, Complexity, Coding Style, Linting Slides 01 Panopto Reading 01
Wed 06/07 Arrays, Lists, Stacks, Queues Slides 02 Panopto
Sat 06/10 Programming Challenges Challenge 01 Challenge 02 Challenge 03
Searching, Sorting, Associative Containers Mon 06/12 Searching, Sorting Slides 03 Panopto Reading 02
Wed 06/14 Sets, Maps Slides 04 Panopto
Sat 06/17 Programming Challenges Challenge 04 Challenge 05 Challenge 06
Complete Search, Bit Manipulation, Greedy Algorithms Mon 06/19 Subsets, Permutations, Backtracking Slides 05 Panopto Reading 03
Wed 06/21 Bit Manipulation, Greedy Algorithms Slides 06 Slides 07 Panopto
Sat 06/24 Programming Challenges Challenge 07 Challenge 08 Challenge 09
Dynamic Programming Mon 06/26 Memoization Slides 08 Panopto Reading 04
Wed 06/28 Table Building Slides 08 Panopto
Sat 07/01 Programming Challenges Challenge 10 Challenge 11 Challenge 12
Trees Mon 07/03 Representation, Traversal Slides 09 Panopto Reading 05
Wed 07/05 Divide and Conquer Slides 09 Panopto
Sat 07/08 Programming Challenges Challenge 13 Challenge 14 Challenge 15
Graphs I Mon 07/10 Representation, Traversal Slides 10 Panopto Reading 06
Wed 07/12 Shortest Paths, Spanning Trees Slides 10 Panopto
Sat 07/15 Programming Challenges Challenge 16 Challenge 17 Challenge 18
Graphs II Mon 07/17 Topological Sorting Slides 11 Panopto Reading 07
Wed 07/19 Paths, Flows Slides 11 Panopto
Sat 07/22 Programming Challenges Challenge 19 Challenge 20 Challenge 21
In-Class Contest Mon 07/24 Contest
Wed 07/26 Contest

Coursework

Component Points
Readings Weekly reading assignments. 6 × 4
Challenges Weekly programming challenges. 20 × 7
External External programming contest. 2 × 30
Contests In-class programming contests. 48
Participation Regular class attendation and contribution to course community. 28
Total 300

Grading

Grade Points Grade Points Grade Points
A 285-300 A- 270-284
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 Challenges are to be submitted to your own private GitHub repository. Unless specified otherwise:

  • Readings are due at noon on the Monday of each week.

  • Challenges are due at noon on the Saturday of each week.

The External Contest submissions are due at midnight on Wednesday, July 26.

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 25% late penalty for assignments turned in 12 hours pass the specified deadline.

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 in Sakai, 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.

CSE Guide to the Honor Code

For the assignments in this class, you may discuss with other students and consult printed and online resources. You may quote from books and online sources as long as you cite them properly. However, you may not look at another student's solution, and you may not copy any significant portions of other's solutions. Furthermore, you may not utilize AI powered tools such as Co-Pilot, Tabnine, or ChatGPT for any of your programming assignments.

The following table summarizes how you may work with other students and use print/online sources:

Resources Solutions AI Tools
Consulting Allowed Not Allowed Not Allowed
Copying Cite Not Allowed Not Allowed

See the CSE Guide to the Honor Code for definitions of the above terms.

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

Information

Online Challenges

  • UVa Online Judge

    This site is an online judge for programming challenges found in the book Programming Challenges.

  • HackerRank

    This site is contains a variety of programming challenges similar to what is found in ACM programming contests. It also includes non-programming contest type problems as well and is a platform for evaluating and testing your programming skills.

  • LeetCode

    This is another site that contains a variety of programming challenges.

  • TopCoder

    This is another site that contains a variety of programming challenges. It also periodically runs contests and learning resources.

  • Project Euler

    This site is a large set of mathematical and programming problems designed to test your abilities and sharpen your skills. The problems make for good practice.

  • Google Code Jam

    This is global programming competition where programmers test their skills by solving multiple rounds of algorithmic puzzles.

  • Advent of Code

    This is an annual series of programming challenges.