Hello everyone,

This email is the second one sent out to all students enrolled (at the time of the email) in the fall, 2025 offering of CSCI 2341 (Data Structures and Algorithms I) at Saint Mary's University. This course will again be offered online (virtually). My name is Porter Scobey and I will be your instructor. Online sessions will take place via Zoom, so you should make sure you have the (free) Zoom client installed on your local machine.

Saint Mary's uses Brightspace as the "starting point" for all courses, including this one, but I also have a "legacy" website where most of my material is located, so you should plan to go there most of the time for what you need (for example: course outline/syllabus, grading scheme, assignment schedule, instructor and marker contact info, office hours). The Brightspace page for this course also links to my home page here at Saint Mary's. Here is the direct link to my home page:

http://cs.smu.ca/~porter/
This page contains a direct link to the current version of the CSCI 2341 course, which you may wish to bookmark.

The course will be offered in "synchronous mode", which means there will be "live" sessions via a Zoom link on the course Brightspace page, and students are expected to attend these sessions. The sessions will take place at the scheduled times: that is, at 10am Halifax time every Monday and Wednesday for lectures, and at 11:30am Halifax time every Monday for recitation/lab sessions. Each session is scheduled for 75 minutes, and on Monday there is a fifteen-minute break between the lecture and lab/recitation.

It's also important to remember that the plan is to record all sessions so that if you do have to miss one or more sessions for any reason, you should be able to watch the recording of a missed session later. All of this and more will be discussed, starting with the first session on Wednesday, September 3 at 10am. To "attend" that session you must go to the course page on Brightspace at that time and "enter" the corresponding Zoom session. Be sure to identify yourself with your first and last name (or your first and another name if you do not have a "last" name) when you are logged in to any of the course Zoom sessions.

Here are some other things you should know before the course begins, just to "set the scene":

We will all be working on the csci.cs-smu.ca Linux "virtual machine" server (this is a change ... it used to be the csci.cs.smu.ca server, so note that one of the periods is now a dash). The current version of Java installed on that machine is Java 21, which is the latest LTS (Long Term Support) version of the language. You should make sure that you do NOT have any later version of Java installed on your own machine if you plan to develop Java there, since you may create Java class files that will not run, and hence can't be tested, on the server. In fact, it will be "safer" to do all your work directly on the server, and you are strongly recommened to do that.

You will be given an account on the server shortly after the beginning of the course. The big advantage of everyone working on the same machine is that if there is a problem of any kind related to the hardware or software on the machine itself, we will all have the same problem. You will access that machine from your PC with a program like ssh (on Windows or the Mac), KiTTY on Windows, and something like ITerm2 or Termius for the Mac. ssh should already exist on both Windows and Mac machines, but the other programs mentioned would have to be downloaded and installed. Even as soon as you get this email, you could try to access csci.cs-smu.ca using one of these programs, and if you do, and you get a login prompt, that's great ... you can't log in yet, because you don't have an account, but that's how you will log in as soon as you do get your account.

For demonstrations on the server I will be using an editor called Vim, which I highly recommend for any student intending to pursue a computing science career, and I will regularly discuss its use during our sessions as you see me using it. Unfortunately, you will not be able to use NetBeans, or any other GUI environment on csci.cs-smu.ca. You can work on your own Windows or Mac, and upload your work to the server. BUT ... I highly recommend (once again) that you take some time "up front" to learn how to work on csci.cs-smu.ca directly, since that is where you will have to submit programming assignments and your programs must run there. In fact, that was the point of my earlier e-mail sent out on July 21.

If you develop your programs using an earlier version of Java on your own PC, your programs should run on the server in Java 21, but if you have a later version they may not run. However, you will need at least Java 15, since that is the version in which "text blocks" (which are very convenient) became standard. AGAIN, DO NOT USE ANY VERSION OF JAVA LATER THAN JAVA 21, EVEN IF IT IS AVAILABLE (since that may mean that your submitted executable will not run on the server and thus cannot be evaluated, and this is another very good reason for working on the server itself). Consider yourself warned!

We will be using a zyBook, which is an online textbook environment, as our course text. Signing up for the zyBook is required, and work done within that zyBook will count significantly toward your final grade. It contains almost all of the data structure and algorithm material we need to cover, and is very interactive, so it makes an excellent learning tool that you can use when and wherever you have internet access. We will discuss the signup in the first class, but there is already a signup link on the legacy course website mentioned above, where you will find details re the cost, the subscription timeframe, and signup steps. You should be able to sign up for the course zyBook any time after receiving this email.

The first assignment that you will submit to your account on the server is not due till September 28, so you will have lots of "lead time" to get "up and running" on the csci.cs-smu.ca server before you have to make your first submission on that server.

There will be opportunities during and after each Zoom session for questions, and if you would like a one-on-one Zoom session for any reason, we can arrange that as well, via the "One-On-One-Zoom Meetings" link on the course legacy home page. In any case, you will certainly need the Zoom app, so you should download the free version to whatever device you will be using to access the course. An Internet connection and computer speakers are the minimal requirement to access the course material with your computer, but you will also need a microphone if you wish to have voice interaction, and a web cam might also be useful, though it is not required.

In preparation for the course, you should review, and get comfortable with, all your previous Java material. Knowing the Linux operating system is not a course pre-requisite, but if Linux will be brand new to you, and you did not get or did not follow up on my previous e-mail, you may find it useful to Google "Linux tutorial" and try to get a bit of an overview that might help to get you started. Also, once again, since I will be using the Vim editor extensively, and it does have a bit of a learning curve, it will help for you to install it on your local machine and start to get comfortable with it. There are, of course, lots of other editors--Visual Studio Code is a good one--but any student who thinks he/she is a "computer person" and is not reasonably comfortable with both Linux and Vim, is (in my judgement) using the term under false pretenses. There are Linux and Vim links available on the "What's New" page (home page) of the course legacy website. Also, vim is cross-platform, so it may be downloaded and installed on Windows or the Mac, so you can experiment with it on your local machine and get comfortable with using it before you get to use it in your account on the Linux server.

If there is anything else of major importance that I think you should know before the course begins, you may be getting another of these emails from me.

In the meantime, enjoy what little is left of our summer. Stay safe, and I look forward to "meeting" you all online as the term begins.

Best regards,
Porter Scobey
Your CSCI 2341 instructor