COMP1511: Introduction to Programming

2 Assignments + Final Exam

Weightings:
Lab Exercises + Work 10%, Weekly Tests cumulatively 5%, Assignment 1 15%, Assignment 2 20% (upped to 25% after moving online), Final Exam 50% (down to 45% after moving online).

No Assumed Knowledge

Really well-taught course and adapted best to being moved online (out of all three of my courses this term). The transition between topics was smooth despite the quick jumps in difficulty at some points and if at some point you get lost, it's easy to get back on track with more accessible avenues for help. If you learn things and adapt quickly, even with no prior knowledge of C it is a nice course with minimal pressure to start uni with, otherwise it gauges really well how you might fare with the learning curve in other courses in comp. Lecturers were great and it's actually really hard to fail - tutors guide you really well and help you out a lot. By far the best course I did this term, and it's not even close - even though it's a prereq for many courses and people are probably going to do it anyway, highly recommend

Lectures: 2 x 2hr
Labs/Tutorials: 1 x 3hr

2/5

Yes through Echo/YouTube before and after moving online respectively

Dr Andrew Taylor, Marc Chee

Marc Chee's live streams on YouTube are often sufficient as notes, but otherwise other material is available through the course website through tute questions, lab exercises amongst other things. Lecture slides are also available as are revision videos.

4.5/5

None - used mostly lecture slides and lab exercises + tute questions

T1 2020

Haven't got marks yet but will add depending on if I remember or not

Effectively none; knowing how to use a computer.

Most of the difficulty of the course was in the two assignments. Previous experience in programming will help significantly. Getting a decent mark in the course is not difficult, however, getting a good mark will require effort in the assignments. The labs are somewhat optional, however each lab exercise needs to be marked in person at a lab, and can only be marked the week it was due or the following week, so attendance is "mandatory" or about half the lab sessions. The hurdle system in this course required successful completion of a practical arrays and linked lists question. Completing specific questions in the two lab exams and the final counted towards this hurdle, and failing to meet this requirement would result in a UF grade (basically a fail) regardless of your mark.

2x 2hr Lecture, 1x 1hr Tutorial + 2hr Lab (combined).

4/5

Yes - screen and voice recorded.

Andrew Taylor

Lecture slides and all tutorial materials were posted online (WebCMS). Only a sample past exam (with only a couple questions and a basic outline of the final exam) was posted prior to the final. As this was the first year COMP1511 was offered, there was no other preparatory material, but some COMP1917 exams were found with questions to attempt by the students (similar content). The tutors created a repository of questions to attempt as practice, as well.

4/5

2017 S1

89 HD

- 10% allocated to milestone writeups
- 5% allocated to labs
- 30% allocated across three assignments (weighted 5%, 10%, 15%)
- Final exam weighted 35% (30% for theory, 5% for practical)

Nil. But the nature of computing courses is that ANY prior programming experience is recommended.

This course is one of the new courses introduced as part of UNSW CSE's massive renovation. It is the second time it's been offered (first offering was last semester), and replaces the old course COMP1917. It is generally regarded as the more intense of the bundle for engineering students that need only 1 computing course for their degree (the alternatives being COMP1911 and ENGG1811).

This course introduces C, which is essentially one of the fundamental languages of the programming world. The focus isn't necessarily on just C syntax itself, but its applications in solving relatively simple problems. Attempting to design methods to solve these problems is generally the hard part, not necessarily the actual coding element.

Content wise, the course is brilliant. It pretty much introduces all the basics expected for an introductory course without overkilling it. Everything is introduced from scratch, which really reflects the "no assumed knowledge" statement. Math required is fairly minimal (no calculus and such for sure). Teaching staff were also very helpful and taught really well. The staff and the content itself basically make up the bulk of the rating given. The extra .5 comes out of interesting assignments (again, content wise).

The teaching staff did their best to cut down on this, which was definitely something I appreciated, but personally I just find blogs effort when I'm marked on them. So any bit of it damages it for me, but it doesn't really damage it enough to make me dislike the course. It was also nice seeing some increase in marks towards the end, regardless of the reasons behind it and how little there were.

A small remark I do want to make before talking about the cons - you can never really know if you'll like coding unless you give it a go. Some people really loved doing it (including me) and other's hated it. This is just because coding doesn't work well with many people's brains; it's a bit algorithmically intense to be fair, and hence why the difficulty rating was above 2/5. So if it's of some interest, give it a shot, and then abort it only when you actually know you really dislike it.

A surprisingly large amount of my marks seem to have fallen from style during the second half of the course. The style guide is something essential to the first course - I've seen outrageously disgusting code be written by some programmers and it just isn't legible. But the extent of its strictness felt too far in some regards (not EVERY regard), and it resulted in many marks going to waste.

As well as being uncertain of where my code was incorrect every now and then. Quite disappointingly, just one of the three assignments ended up drowning away all of my expectations for my results (the other two were really great).

So essentially, marks negatively bias my ratings (at least, when they are a cause of disappointment and not expected). But I maintain the relatively good quality of this course. Apart from a bomb thrown in the final practical exam, everything did feel quite easy for me. Any student capable enough should give this course a try.

2 x 2 hours of lectures, 1 hour tutorial, 2 hour lab

3/5

Yes

Andrew Bennett (occasionally substituted in by Jashank Jeremy)

The materials they provide for the lectures, tutorials and labs are all you really need. (Well, and of course assignments.) Exam skeletons provided which reduce reading time required in the actual exam room. Fairly abundant in quantity.

3.5/5

As implied above, not required

2017/2

82 DN