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cs2381 Notes: Lab 01 - Welcome

·3 mins

Lab Rules

  • No personal electronics; they can be in the room, but not out. If you need to check a text message, step out of the lab room.
  • Only approved web resources:

I agree that these rules are obnoxious. But the only way to practice something is to do it, and we’re trying to practice writing code from scratch without external help.

Lab Workstations

  • Log in with your USNH username.
  • These have fixed software which will be limiting, and they don’t reliably persist settings.
  • I recommend using OneDrive, but not allowing it to take over your local Documents folder.

Register for Inkfish

  • Go to https://inkfish.homework.quest/
  • Type in your school email address under Get a Password. The @usnh.edu one.
  • The email will show up in your spam folder within 10 minutes.
  • Pick a long enough password.
  • Hit “all classes” and request access to this class.

First Teams, Pair Programming

  • You will usually be working with a partner in lab.
  • Today we’ll assign them as people get registered on Inkfish.

Pair programming works as follows:

  • Both partners sit in front of one computer.
  • One person is the pilot - they get the keyboard. The other person is the copilot.
  • The pilot types, the co-pilot watches and provides helpful feedback (or at least calls out typos).
  • After each section of the assignment, the partners switch roles.

Why?

  • Harder to get distracted.
  • Harder to stay stuck.
  • If one partner doesn’t understand something, they have someone to discuss it with.
  • Better chance to catch non-obvious mistakes.

The Mechanics of Completing a Lab

(Walk through completing the first part of Lab 01)

  • Download the starter code.
  • Figure out where the download went.
    • Probably your “Downloads” directory.
  • Move the starter code somewhere more appropriate.
  • If it’s an archive, unpack it and rename the directory.
    • tar xzvf archive.tar.gz
    • mv lab03-starter lab03-yourname
  • Figure out what to do.
    • Do it.
    • Remember to swap pilot/co-pilot roles after each section.
  • Run the tests locally.
    • mvn verify
  • Clean your project.
    • mvn clean
    • The autograder will give you a zero for non-cleaned solutions.
  • Pack your solution archive.
    • tar czvf archive-yourname.tar.gz lab03-yourname
  • Submit your solution archive to Inkfish.
    • Wait for the tests to run.
    • If the tests fail, fix and resubmit.

Important tactical suggestions:

  • Run the tests first. Then submit the starter code.
  • Read both the assignment and the tests to figure out what you’re supposed to do and how it’s being autograded.
  • Do one problem at a time.
    • Then run the tests.
    • Then submit your work.

Useful Info: What’s Maven?

Maven is a management tool for Java projects.

A Maven project has:

  • A top-level directory
  • Containing a project config file: pom.xml
  • And source code in a specific structure.
    • src/main/java/[package]/Whatever.java
    • src/test/java/[package]/WhateverShould.java
    • and some other stuff

If you open the project directory with VS Code and the appropriate plugins, it’ll handle it as a Maven project.

But you can also (and should be able to) use Maven yourself from the command line.

Common Maven commands:

mvn compile
mvn verify
mvn test
mvn checkstyle:checkstyle
mvn exec:java
mvn clean

Lab 01

Now you do the (rest of the) lab.