Course Outline
Weekly schedule
Pre-requisites
Work Load
Homeworks and exams
Sample Programs Used in the class
References
Tips and guidelines for good programming
Academic dishonesty policy
Past courses I taught at Columbia University

Ramana Isukapalli's Columbia University Page

I am teaching W3101: Programming Languages: C++ in Fall 2016.
Day/Time: Tuesdays 6:10 - 8:00 PM.
Location: Mudd 337
TA: Somya Vasudevan, sv2500@columbia.edu
First Lecture is on Sep 06.

My contact information

I work at Alcatel-Lucent.

Columbia email:

Course outline

This course covers C++ from an "Object Oriented Programming" (OOP) perspective. At a high level, we will cover the concepts of classes, objects, data encapsulation, inheritance, polymorphism, etc. in C++. This will be a hands on course --- we will see many programming examples throughout the course. Homework assignments are intended to make the students familiar and confident of writing C++ programs. The aim of this course is to make students design and write C++ programs in the area of their study/research.

Weekly schedule

Pre-requisites

  • Some experience in programming or a programming language is helpful for this class.
  • If not, students should be willing to learning programming "quickly".

Work load

  • Four programming assignments: 70%
  • A final exam: 30%

Homeworks and exams

  • Homeworks will be posted on my web page (this page). Please complete them and submit them in Courseworks. Please DO NOT mail them to me.
  • Late submission policy: No late submissions please, (unless of course, you have a really, really good reason!).

Sample Programs Used in the class

As requested by some students in the class, I am giving access to the sample programs that I used in the class. Please note that these programs are kept simple intentionally, to explain the concepts. Programs used in:

References

There are many textbooks available on C++; there is a lot of material available on the web. Any of these should be fine. Lecture notes will be provided prior to each lecture. In addition to these, you can use the following material:

Past Courses I taught in Columbia

Tips and guidelines for good programming

Here are some tips you may find useful when writing code. Please follow these when you submit your homeworks.
  • Include comments wherever you can. Make sure that your code can be easily understood by others (and you yourself, in future).
  • Use meaningful names for variables and constants.
  • If some code segmenet ( e.g., computing the outcome of some mathematical functions like factorial or exponent) has to be used in several places, it is better to have a separate function for it. In general, the same piece of code should, in general, not appear twice anywhere in your code. If you have to change it future, it is much easier to change it in one place, than in many places.
  • If a constant (like "pi") value has to be used in many places, define it as a const variable once ( e.g., const double pi) instead of using the value (3.1415..) in many places.

Academic dishonesty policy

The aim of the course is to learn C++ in a relaxed and informal atmosphere. If you have problems following the course material or doing any homeworks, please discuss with me. Go through the academic dishonesty page and please do not cheat in the homeworks or in the exams. I will be forced to follow the rules strictly if such a situation arises.
Ramana Isukapalli