Introduction

Tom Kelliher, CS 116

Aug. 28, 2002

Administrivia

Announcements

Assignment

Read Chapter 1.

Outline

1. Syllabus

2. Three big concepts.

3. Online survey.

4. Exercise.

Coming Up

First lab.

Syllabus

1. Personal home page, office hours, class time.

2. Objectives: Introduction to CS, OOP in Java, program and algorithm development.

3. Course points:
   1. Labs and assignments: Labs, partners. Post-lab assignments, individually. Late work. Toolbox. Workload.

   2. Online CS toolbox.

   3. Quizzes: Six scheduled. Beginning of class. Lowest score dropped. No make-ups.

   4. Exams: Two. Make-ups with good reason.

   5. Final. Cumulative. Scheduled by registrar.

4. Course home page: Items of general interest, labs, solutions, meeting outlines.

5. Check your Goucher e-mail.

6. Distractions: cell phones, private discussions.

7. Attendance: participation is an essential part of the learning process. Readiness: Assigned readings expectation. Integrity: Honor code.

   Come to class prepared to work and experiment!

Three Big Concepts

1. An object is an entity that contains data and its own methods for manipulating that data.

2. A class is a collection of objects. The class definition provides a prototype for all of its objects ( abstraction).

3. A class can inherit all or most of its definition from another class ( reuse). In Java we say that a class extends another and objects in the extended class will inherit the data and methods from the original class plus will probably have additional data and/or methods.

Creation and Use

1. Creating an Object ( binding).

   The constructor for a class has the same name as the class. We create an object as follows:

   ClassName objectName = new ClassName(argument list);
   

2. Using an object.

   We use the methods of an object as follows:

   objectName.methodName(actual arguments);
   

Online Survey

See class home page.

Exercise

Refer to handout.