Ramana Isukapalli's Columbia University Page

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 Spring 2014.
Day/Time: Tuesdays 6:10 - 8:00 PM.
Location: 825 Seely W Mudd Building.

Teaching Assitants:

Siddhartha Chandra, sc3653, Office hours: Wednesday 1-2 PM
Adith Tekur Srinivasmurthy, at2904, Office hours: Tuesdays 2-3 PM
TA Office: Mudd 122 A.

First Lecture is on Mar 25.

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

Date	Topics	Notes	Reference
Mar 25	Course highlights Overview of C C data types, statements, expressions Usage of if, else, for, while, do, etc. functions and pointers.	Lecture1	C++ Language Tutorial Basics of C++ Control structures Compound data types Arrays, Character Sequences
Apr 01	Design principles of C++. Class, object, data and methods. Constructor	Lecture2	Pointers, Dynamic Memory Data Structures, Data Types Classes
Apr 08	Constructor and destructor Data encapsulation	Lecture3	Classes Data encapsulation
~~Apr 15~~ Apr 17	C++ string class Data encapsulation, contd. friend functions/classes Inheritance this, const functions Function overriding, overloading Passing arguments by value or reference	Lecture4	String class Data encapsulation Friend classes and functions Inheritance Orverloading and overriding Passing arguments by reference
Apr 22	Polymorphism Virtual functions Abstract classes	Lecture5	Polymorphism Abstract classes
Apr 29	Templates Operator overloading STL: vector, list classes, iterators. Standard template libraries Operator overloading Inline functions Casting in C++ Namespaces Course summary	Lecture6	Templates Operator overloading STL C++ STL Operator overloading Casting in C++ Namespaces
May 13	Final Exam	No lecture	--

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

Five 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!).

Homework/Exam	Solutions
HW1	HW1 solutions
HW2	HW2 solutions
HW3	HW3 solutions
HW4	HW4 solutions
HW5	HW5 solutions
Final exam	Final exam solutions

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:

C++ language tutorial available at http://www.cplusplus.com/doc/tutorial.
Bruce Eckel. Thinking in C++ (2nd edition). An online copy used to be available. It probably is still available, search the above web page.
C++ Standard template Library. There are many other sources available online, you can search the web and use the one you like.
C++ Programming Tutorial available at http://cplus.about.com/od/beginnerctutorial/l/blcplustut.htm.
S. B. Lippman, J. Lajoie, and B. E. Moo. C++ Primer (4th edition) . Addison-Wesley Professional, 2005, ISBN 0201721481.

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