This page does not represent the most current semester of this course; it is present merely as an archive.
“A syllabus is just a list of words they don’t know yet.”—Seth Reichelson
This course is intended to cover topics on the abstraction hierarchy ranging from a step above silicon to a step below languages you are likely to program. At the end of it, you will be able to
“The pain of parting is nothing to the joy of meeting again.”—Charles Dickens
Lecture is optional but strongly encouraged. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 1:00–1:50, in Thorton E303.
There are two lab sections, both meeting in MEC 213: one on Wednesdays 5:00–6:15 pm and the other on Thursdays 5:00–6:15 pm. Please attend your assigned lab section.
I do not schedule review sessions or the like outside of usual class time.
“Some college cell, Where muzzing quizzes mutter monkish schemes.”—William Roberts
Some tasks are designed to help you learn and practice what you learned enough that the concepts solidify in your mind. Others are designed to measure what you have learned. The primary kinds of tasks are:
“I heard a sound; I turned around; I turned around to face the thing that made the sound.”—They Might Be Giants
| Instructor | TAs | |
|---|---|---|
| Name | Luther Tychonievich | Dylan Cao, Vineet Kalpathi, William Mayes, James McDowell, Gustavo Moreira, Omika Suryawanshi |
| Location | Rice 208 | Thornton Stacks (A235) |
| Office Hours | Monday 10:00–11:00 Tuesday 13:00–15:00 Friday 11:00–12:00 |
See the OH schedule |
| Phone | 243-3789 | (none) |
| tychonievich@virginia.edu | use Piazza |
For most communication, Piazza is preferred to email. If you email, include “COA1” in the subject line to prevent your email from skipping my inbox and never getting read.
Our TAs are students too, with duties and work outside of their TAing. Please do not ask them to act as your TA except at the scheduled on-the-clock times they have listed as their office hours and lab time. They are also kind people; please don’t put them in the position of having to say no or (worse) being nice to you at the expense of their own schooling.
“When you read books your eyeballs wither away leaving the bare sockets”—Yang Wanli
Although we have several textbooks we are considering for use, none of them were settled on for this pilot offering. Readings written by us or selected from articles or web pages will periodically be posted on the schedule. Some of these may have “reading quizzes” associated with them: quizzes to be taken based on the reading prior to the lecture in which they are discussed.
If you desire additional resources, I recommend the textbook Introduction to Computer Systems: From Bits and Gate to C/C++ & Beyond by Yale Patt and Sanjay Patel. That book contains all of the major topics we’ll cover, with a different presentation than we’ll cover them.
“If you really want to understand something, the best way is to try and explain it to someone else. That forces you to sort it out in your own mind. And the more slow and dim-witted your pupil, the more you have to break things down into more and more simple ideas. And that’s really the essence of programming. By the time you’ve sorted out a complicated idea into little steps that even a stupid machine can deal with, you’ve certainly learned something about it yourself.”—Douglas Adams
This course will teach you the basics of x86-64 assembly and quite a bit of C. There will be multiple assignments dealing with each.
Estimating how long it will take someone to complete a coding assignment is always difficult. The target difficulty is 5–10 hours of focused effort each week.
Grading is one of the aspects of a course that instructors enjoy even less than students. Still, we are stuck with them, so here goes.
In February 2019 the CS faculty approved a definition of what we believe grades mean. It is my intent to approximate that definition in this course. As a brief summary,
| Letter | Student demonstrated | Recommendation re future courses1 |
|---|---|---|
| A | mastery of all topics | likely to do well |
| B | competence in significant topics | able to do well with some review |
| C | sufficient competence | likely to be challenging |
| D | minimal competence | unlikely to succeed |
| F | less than minimal competence | retake this course first |
These goals do not map perfectly to numeric scores. If you get full or nearly full points on all graded tasks, you should expect an A. If you miss non-trivial numbers of points or deadlines, we may attempt to assess your standing on this subjective scale in lieu of a raw point-based grade.
Points are awarded per task. Different tasks and different task types are given different weight, as outlined below.
| Task | Weight |
|---|---|
| Quizzes | 10% |
| Assignments | 40% |
| Lab | 10% |
| Exams | 40% |
If you earn at least 93% of the points, you will earn an A. If you earn less, you will likely be given a lower grade based on the Grading Goals. We expect this will approximate the usual 10%-per-letter breakdown, but will attempt to diagnose particular learning outcomes and mastery levels rather than being constrained to pure mechanical grade computation.
Grade estimates will be provided on the submission site, accurately reflecting individual assignment performance but being only estimates of overall course grade.
Quiz solutions are released the moment the quiz closes, and thus quizzes cannot be taken late. Your lowest quiz score is dropped.
Assignments may be submitted up to 48 hours late. They are given 90% credit between 0 and 24 hours late; at 80% credit between 24 and 48 hours late. If extensions beyond that time are needed, please see the professor to discuss why and if other accommodations are also needed.
Labs may be checked off late for 90% credit by visiting a TA during office hours later during the week of the lab and going through the usual checkoff process. If extensions beyond that time are needed, please see the professor to discuss why and if other accommodations are also needed.
Exams may not be taken late without special-case permission.
Behave professionally.
Never abuse anyone, including the emotional abuse of blaming others for your mistakes. Kindness is more important than correctness.
Let our TAs be students when they are not on the clock as TAs.
I always hope everyone will behave honestly. I know we all are tempted to do what we ought not; if you do something you regret, the sooner you tell me the sooner (and more leniently) we can correct it.
You must cite any and every source you consult, other than those explicitly provided by the course itself. Talked to a friend, saw an interesting video, consulted a website, had a tutor? Tell us! Put it in a comment in your code.
You must write your own code. Not just type it (though you need to do that too): compose it yourself, as your own original work. Beware of looking at other students code or code you find online: it is hard to unsee and can spoil your ability to compose your own solutions!
Working together can help you learn. But make sure you learned! We may ask you to explain aspects of a solution you turn in, and may dock points if it appears you simply copied someone else’s ideas (or just guessed a lot of things until one worked) without understanding them.
It would probably go without saying if we didn’t say it, but no assistance may be given or received on any supervised evaluation or online quiz unless specifically announced otherwise by the professor (or another proctor of the evaluation).
If I believe you have acted dishonestly, I will communicate this fact to you and propose a penalty. If you have information I lack, please share that with me; I may thereafter change my belief and/or proposed penalty.
If we are not able to come to an agreement, or if the case is particularly egregious and beyond my comfort level handling in-course, we will instead refer the case to the University Honor System and abide by their findings.
If you qualify for accommodations from the SDAC, please let me know, preferably in my office where we can discuss how your accommodations will interplay with the quiz- and assignment-based nature of this course.
As a religious person myself, I fully support the university’s stance on accommodating religious observances. If such observances or other religious beliefs impact or are likely to impact your work this semester, please let me know as soon as you are aware of this impact.
Bad things happen. People forget things and make mistakes. Bad days coincide with due dates. Etc.
If you believe that circumstances warrant an change in deadline, a second chance, or some other accommodation in order to more accurately synchronize grade with knowledge, come talk to me and we’ll resolve the situation as best we can.
The most obvious future course is COA2. COA1 material is also directly important for work in various fields including networks, cyber-physical systems, robotics, operating systems, and any constrained-resource or speed-sensitive application↩︎