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
su25-cse-30872-01-group@nd.edu
Zoom Meeting
984 0302 3681
Slack Channel
#cse-30872-su25
GitHub Organization
nd-cse-30872-su25

Instructor

Instructor
Peter Bui (pbui@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
I/O, Sequence Containers Mon 06/02 I/O, Complexity, Coding Style, Linting Slides 00 Slides 01 Panopto Reading 00
Wed 06/04 Arrays, Lists, Stacks, Queues Slides 02 Panopto Reading 01
Sat 06/07 Programming Challenges Challenge 01 Challenge 02 Challenge 03
Searching, Sorting, Associative Containers Mon 06/09 Searching, Sorting Slides 03 Reading 02
Wed 06/11 Sets, Maps Slides 04
Sat 06/14 Programming Challenges Challenge 04 Challenge 05 Challenge 06
Complete Search, Bit Manipulation, Greedy Algorithms Mon 06/16 Subsets, Permutations, Backtracking Reading 03
Wed 06/18 Bit Manipulation, Greedy Algorithms
Sat 06/21 Programming Challenges Challenge 07 Challenge 08 Challenge 09
Dynamic Programming Mon 06/23 Memoization Reading 04
Wed 06/25 Table Building
Sat 06/28 Programming Challenges Challenge 10 Challenge 11 Challenge 12
Trees Mon 06/30 Representation, Traversal Reading 05
Wed 07/02 Divide and Conquer
Sat 07/05 Programming Challenges Challenge 13 Challenge 14 Challenge 15
Graphs I Mon 07/07 Representation, Traversal Reading 06
Wed 07/09 Shortest Paths, Spanning Trees
Sat 07/12 Programming Challenges Challenge 16 Challenge 17 Challenge 18
Graphs II Mon 07/14 Topological Sorting Reading 07
Wed 07/16 Paths, Flows
Sat 07/19 Programming Challenges Challenge 19 Challenge 20 Challenge 21
In-Class Contest Mon 07/21 Contest
Wed 07/23 Contest

Coursework

Component Points
Readings Weekly reading assignments. 6 × 4
Challenges Weekly programming challenges. 20 × 7
Code Reviews Weekly code review with AI agent. 7 × 1
External External programming contest. 2 × 30
Contests In-class programming contests. 48
Participation Regular class attendation and contribution to course community. 21
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 23.

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.

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 on 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.

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.

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.

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.

  • Advent of Code

    This is an annual series of programming challenges.