Introduction to CS 106B

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Introduction to CS 106B
Eric Roberts CS 106B September 21, 2009
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CS 106B Staff
Professor Eric Roberts eroberts_at_cs.stanford.edu O
ffice Hours (Gates 202) Tuesdays
930-1130 Wednesdays 430-530
Head TA Ilya Sherman isherman_at_stanford.edu Office
Hours (Gates 160) TBA
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Meeting Place
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Is CS 106B the Right Course?
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Learning More about C
CS 106B is a course about programming
abstractions, not about C itself. If you want
to learn the details, take CS 106L
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SyllabusWeek 1
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SyllabusWeek 2
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SyllabusWeek 3
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SyllabusWeek 4
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SyllabusWeek 5
Midterm Exam Tuesday, October 20 315 or 700 P.M.
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SyllabusWeek 6
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SyllabusWeek 7
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SyllabusWeek 8
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SyllabusWeek 9
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Thanksgiving Week
Thanksgiving week (no class)
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Dead Week and Beyond
Final Exam times Tuesday, December 8 Thursday,
December 10 1215-315 P.M.
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The Big Ideas in CS 106B

• Recursion. Recursion is an enormously powerful
  technique that enables you to solve complex
  problems that you would never be able to solve
  without it.
• Data abstraction. For most of the quarter, well
  be learning about a variety of abstract data
  types that will prove to be enormously valuable
  as you write programs.
• Algorithmic efficiency. As you will learn over
  the course of the quarter, different algorithms
  can vary enormously in terms of the amount of
  time required to solve a particular problem. In
  CS 106B, you will learn how to measure
  algorithmic efficiency along with some general
  techniques for developing efficient algorithms.

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Assignments in CS 106B

• Assignments in CS 106B are due at 500P.M.
  Assignments that come in after 500 will be
  considered late.
• Everyone in CS 106B starts the quarter with two
  late days that you can use at any time you need
  some extra time. In my courses, late days
  correspond to class meetings, so that, if an
  assignment is due on Wednesday and you turn it in
  on Friday, that counts as one late day.
• Extensions can be approved only by Ilya Sherman.
• Assignments are graded by your section leader,
  who discusses your work in an interactive,
  one-on-one grading session.
• Each assignment is given two grades one on
  functionality and one on programming style.
  Style matters. Companies in Silicon Valley
  expect Stanford graduates to understand how to
  write code that other programmers can maintain.

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The CS 106B Grading Scale

• Functionality and style grades for the
  assignments use the following scale

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Contests

• CS 106B will have three contests as follows
• The Random Writer Contest associated with
  Assignment 2
• The Recursion Contest associated with Assignment
  3
• The BASIC Contest associated with Assignment 5
• First prize in the contest is a score of 100 on
  one of the graded components of the course,
  typically the final exam.
• As an additional incentive, entering any of the
  contests gives you chances to win an additional
  grand prize in a random drawing at the end of the
  quarter.
• Securing a runner-up prize or an honorable
  mention on any contest gives you additional
  chances in the random drawing, as does having an
  assignment submitted as a candidate. You can
  also gain chances by reporting errors in the text
  and by making useful suggestions for updating the
  examples.

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Why Study Computer Science

• The computing industry offers some of the best
  employment opportunities for college graduates in
  the United States today
• The number of jobs in the domestic software
  industry are at an all-time high and are
  projected to grow dramatically over the next
  decade.
• Salaries for newly minted B.S. graduates in
  Computer Science are high, sometimes exceeding
  the 100,000 mark.
• In 2005, Money magazine rated software engineer
  as the number one job in America.
• Employment in this area is vital for national
  competitiveness.

• At the same time, student interest in these
  disciplines has plummeted. In the United States,
  computing enrollments fell by almost 50 percent
  from 2000 to 2006.

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Degree Production vs. Job Openings
160,000
Ph.D.
140,000
Masters
120,000
Bachelors
100,000
Projected job openings
80,000
60,000
40,000
20,000
Engineering
Physical Sciences
Biological Sciences
Adapted from a presentation by John Sargent,
Senior Policy Analyst, Department of Commerce, at
the CRA Computing Research Summit, February 23,
2004. Original sources listed as National
Science Foundation/Division of Science Resources
Statistics degree data from Department of
Education/National Center for Education
Statistics Integrated Postsecondary Education
Data System Completions Survey and NSF/SRS
Survey of Earned Doctorates and Projected Annual
Average Job Openings derived from Department of
Commerce (Office of Technology Policy) analysis
of Bureau of Labor Statistics 2002-2012
projections. See http//www.cra.org/govaffairs/co
ntent.php?cid22.
Sources
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The End
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A Thought Experiment about Offshoring

• Suppose that you are Microsoft and that you can
  hire a software developer from Stanford whose
  loaded costs will be 200,000 per year. Over in
  Bangalore, however, you can hire a software
  developer for 75,000 per year. Both are equally
  talented and will create 1,000,000 annually in
  value. What do you do?

• Although the developer in Bangalore has a higher
  return, the optimal strategy is to hire them
  both. After all, why throw away 800,000 a year?