This website for the CSCI 3355 course starting in January, 2026, is currently under development. Anything seen here (until this message disappears) may be incorrect or subject to updating and/or replacement before the course begins.

Note that this course has been previously offered as CSCI 3826 (Winter, 2020) and CSCI 3829 (Winter, 2022), so if you have taken and passed either of those previous versions of the course, you are not eligible to take this one.

It will be very important to attend the first couple of classes in this course in order to get familiar with the infrastructure that will be used throughout the course.

As you are probably aware, artificial intelligence in the world of computing has made significant progress recently, and tools like ChatGPT and many others like it are now available for assistance with answering questions and solving problems of all kinds. Although we will not be making formal use of any of these tools in this course, for help with solving problems in the course you are permitted to use whatever tools of this kind to which you might have access.

What's New: Current (and Old) News

The most recent course news appears first. Scroll down, if necessary, for "older news".
Students taking this course are expected to maintain familiarity with the content of this page.

xxx, December xxx, 2025

An email was sent out this evening to all students currently enrolled in this course. If you did not receive the email (or you enrolled after that time) you should read the content of that email, which is here.

This course will use an online text from zybooks.com, and you will be required to work through the various activities it contains that deal with material covered in the course, as well as some material that we will not cover directly, but that you might find useful to know. See the link in the menu at the left (Current Course Text) for signup details, and be sure to read that document completely and carefully before signing up. You can sign up any time after receiving this e-mail.

Be sure to check out the Grading Scheme under Course Infrastructure in the menu at the left. You will be developing a sample e-commerce website, completing zyBook assignments, and performing hands-on activities and Breakout room website evaluations. At certain times we will expect you have your website ready to be critiqued by other and you must also be ready to critique the websites of the other Breakout Room participants.

You will get a Linux account for use in the course, so be careful not to confuse these username/password combinations:

  1. Your personal (Windows) Saint Mary's s-account username, and its password, which you also will use to log in to SMUPort to retrieve any grades that have been logged on Brightspace.
  2. Your course account for this course (with username of the form u## and its password), which will be an account on the (virtual) ps.cs-smu.ca Linux server.

    The password for this account works not only for the account itself, but also for a number of other different course-and-account-related scenarios, and must not be changed, since the marker and the instructor will need access to your work in all of these scenarios.

    Once again, this reminder: In a departure from normal practice, do not change this password.

  3. Some important notes that may apply to you: