What's EECS 280 all about? Why are we here? Why do we care?

While the overall goals of EECS 280 haven't changed since… checks video… 2021… a few specific things have! I'll make sure to call out anything specific you need to know for the current term.

Where course content has changed or I figure out a better way to teach something, I'll also make sure to record updated videos. Sometimes I reuse a video and point out a few minor differences. Because course policies change slightly each term, this lecture has more cases of that than usual…

Fall 2024

We now have 6 projects instead of 5, but the workload is the same. We used to have a single project covering "Binary Search Trees" and a "Piazza Classifier Application". This term, we're splitting it into two pieces. Project 4 is now the "Piazza Classifier" half, and Project 5 is the "Binary Search Trees" half. We made this change because it aligns better with the flow of curriculum in the rest of the course and overall should make for a better student experience.

The application on the old project 4 has changed to implementing a text editor using a linked list, and it now sits at project 5. We made this change because it's a more interesting and well-motivated application of a linked list (which we'll cover later in the course) than previous versions of the project.

Let's take a look at the major parts of the course, including resources and websites you'll use to engage with the course and how the overall course is graded.

Don't worry if this all seems a bit overwhelming. There are a lot of different components to the course and a bunch of different resources to get used to. You can find everything from eecs280.org, and we'll try to keep you up-to-date with the most relevant material. I also highly encourage that you ask questions if you're feeling lost - on Ed, Discord, in office hours, in lab, etc.

Setup Tutorials
Here's my recommended approach to getting your computer set up for C++ development:

C++ Walkthrough Sessions
Join us for a live walkthrough session via Zoom on C++ development including set up, compilers, makefiles, C++ IDEs, EECS 280 project workflow, and open Q&A.

• Wednesday, Aug 28 at 7-8:30pm via Zoom.
• Separate, concurrent sessions for Windows/Mac.
• Links on eecs280.org. Recordings will be posted.

It's not terribly exciting, but let's take a bit of time to discuss assignment weights, exams, and overall grading in the course.

Lectures are followed up with labs, where you work with small groups of other students to further explore and pratice the course material.

Let's take a break from talking about course logistics and dive into our first sequence of course material! We'll start with a brief introduction to the nature of C++ as a compiled language.

So, what does it actually look like to write a program in C++, compile it, and run it?

There were several commands in there, including the g++ hello.cpp -o hello.exe that I used to compile the program. Don't worry about memorizing any of this right now. The tutorials and C++ setup walkthrough sessions will go into some more depth on these.

Now, we'll spend some time on a brief, whirlwind-style tour of some of the characteristics of C++. This is just a high-level overview, and we'll spend more time on a lot of details throughout the rest of the course.

It's worth looking at expressions and variables in a bit more detail, especially the way variables and their types relate to the underlying memory used in our program.

Understanding variables as a name for an object in memory also helps us understand what would happen if a variable were declared, but not properly initialized before we use it…

Finally, we'll look at a few ways the compiler checks for common errors in programs before we're allowed to run them, using rules of scope and static typing.

You get to exercise the skills you learn in lecture and lab in six large-scale programming projects throughout the course, designed to solidify your understanding and give you a chance to build some neat applications with real-world appeal!

We want you to learn with and from each other! Enjoying the class with others and having a network you can reach out to for help is highly encouraged. At the same time, we want to make sure everyone has an opportunity to learn for themselves and that nobody takes credit for someone else's work. We follow the UM CoE Honor Code.

The stuff I said in that video all still applies… but that chart is pretty old. Here's a more recent chart from the terms of EECS 280 (and excluding ENGR 101) that I've been involved with. The takeaway is the same - we only report cases to the honor council where there is compelling evidence plagiarism occurred.

Generative AI Policy
Finally, it's worth mentioning our Generative AI Policy. The short version - you're encouraged to use tools like ChatGPT, Copilot, etc. to help you learn, but you aren't allowed to use them to do your work for you. The full version in our syllabus is also worth a read.

In almost all cases in EECS 280, I highly recommend against using generative AI tools for writing ANY code, regardless of the amount. A huge part of this course is building up your own programming skills.

Just a few parting thoughts.