Notices and Updates

Truth is ever to be found in the simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things. ../uploads.doc, ../coretechnologies/buildtools, ../CoreTechnologies/buildtools/Bats.htm, FTPusingIE.doc, FTPwithWS_FTP.doc, AccessingHdriveRemotely.doc, helpdesk.ecs.syr.edu/, ./docs/VSinstallationUsingVirtualCDmounting.doc, ./docs/VPN_Instructions.doc

../cse681/projects/HandinsFall2010.xlsx Here's a link to the Midterm Makeup Examination: www.ecs.syr.edu/faculty/fawcett/handouts/CSE681/MidTerm/MTMUFall2010.doc

How to download code from course code folders? - The easiest way to access code is with FTP. Unfortunately, that is available only on campus or using the vpn client provided for registered students at www.its.syr.edu.

For all former students, I am slowly putting zip archives in the various code folders, so that you can get the entire contents simply by using the "save target as" selection on the right-click context menu in Internet Explorer. If you don't find a zip file and are a former student, send me an email and I will put the archive you want in its code folder. My late policy for all courses is to deduct one point per day after the due date. So if your project is 20 days late you will have 20 points deducted from your grade for the project. I regret the need for this. Sigh!

There are a few reasons for which extensions to project due dates are granted, with evidence. They are: illness or family emergency, trip out of town for conference, business trip out of town, and an interview trip, out of town. Advance notice is required for the trips. All courses served by this web site require project submissions to be uploaded, using the project upload script linked on every course page, and also linked above, and ../upload.cfm. Note that this requires an SU computer account. You will find instructions on how to upload projects ../uploads.doc.

The library has the following books on reserve for your use:

Programming WPF, Chris Sells and Ian Griffith - CSE681 Programming WCF Services, Juval Lowey - CSE681 Bullet Proof Web Design, Cedarholm - CSE686 XSLT 2nd Edition, Kay - CSE686 Design Patterns, Gamma et. al. - CSE776 Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture - CSE776 Refactoring to Patterns - CSE776 Pattern Languages of Program Design Conference Proceedings - CSE776 Organizational Patterns of Agile Software - CSE776 Responding to a student's email, I gathered a set of links about interviews (taking and giving) that I like, and thought they might be useful for you. Note that I don't agree with everything said, but do agree with at least most of the posts:

www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000226.html www.realsoftwaredevelopment.com/10-tips-to-ace-a-software-development-interview/ steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/03/get-that-job-at-google.html thesmithfam.org/blog/2008/01/01/how-to-conduct-a-good-c-phone-interview/ geekswithblogs.net/jolson/archive/2005/01/21/20636.aspx www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/ThePhoneScreen.html www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/GuerrillaInterviewing3.html

I've added a studentprojects.xml describing some work students are doing with me as background material for a book I'm working on. Here are a few links to help your job search: www.essentialnyjobs.com/ If you search on C++ or C# you'll find lots of hits. Some of those are for companies, like Lockheed-Martin and Sensis that do classified work and need citizenship. But there are still alot of other opportunities. I got 90 hits for C++, 23 hits for C#, 105 for .Net, and 63 for Java. There were even 24 hits for Cobol. www.americasjobexchange.com/seeker/jobsearch/quick Again, I got lots of hits on the same searches as above. This site allows you to enter any city you want. Visual Studio 2010, Professional, is available for download from MSDN. You need an id and password, which most students will have already, as new students are entered into a database that results in you getting an email from Microsoft with the id and password. If you don't have that, contact the CIT help desk, helpdesk.ecs.syr.edu/, on the second floor of Link Hall, near the elevator.

When you download, you get iso images that have to be burned to DVDs or CDs. You can do that in Win7 by right clicking on the iso image and select burn. Otherwise, you can do that in the computer labs, using instructions you find ../CDs-DVDs-from-ISO-Images.doc. Also, here is an www.petri.co.il/how_to_write_iso_files_to_cd.htm that tells about other options. Here's a folder: ../compileAndRun that contains information about how to modify your environment in Cmd windows, so you can run all the visual studio tools, like devenv.exe, e.g., Visual Studio. This makes it simple to write compile.bat and run.bat files for your projects.

That folder contains a startup.bat file, also in ../CoreTechnologies/StartupBatFile. If you run this batch file from a shortcut, you will have access to all the Visual Studio tools, e.g., compilers, WSDL, XSL, XSD, etc. from the command line. This is necessary, for example, to generate the C# code for a webservice proxy, using WSDL, as we've discussed in class. See the accompanying screenshot to see how to set up the shortcut.

Note that you may have to modify the paths I've used to match your machine. If you've done all standard installs that may not be necessary. Also, the doskey settings are things I find useful, but you can ignore if you wish.

CSE681: You will find ..\cse681\midterm\topicsformidtermFall2010.doc and ..\cse681\midterm\studymaterials_MidtermExamFall2010.doc may help preparing for midterm examination. CSE681: I've enabled turning off comments in CSemiExp. This isn't really necessary for making effective rules, but can make some rules simpler. See www.ecs.syr.edu/faculty/fawcett/handouts/CSE681/code/MVCDemo-NewBeta/. Note that this is a beta. I've done some testing and Akshay Baviskar has also been using. Look at the Semi.cs test stub in the SemiExp project to see how to use this feature. The time of the makeup class has been changed, see below There will be a make-up session for the Monday afternoon section of CSE681 - SMA (Section 2) on Wednesday, September 8th from 5:30pm to 7:00pm. We will cover the contents of Lecture #3, the same thing covered in the Wednesday morning class.

I've also delayed the due date for Project #1 OCD from Monday Sep 13th to Wed Sep 15th. That's only two days but will give you a little more time to make up for the missing labor day class. Every Friday morning, from 9:00am until Noon, I hold an open help session, for anyone taking my classes in the current semester. Come and ask whatever questions you may have about the class materials. The rest of the links below are from last year. I've left them as they will be useful for you too. New notice items will be place on top of these.

Here are some links to Windows Forms demos in C++/CLI that I sent to a CSE681 student:

www.ecs.syr.edu/faculty/fawcett/handouts/CoreTechnologies/WindowsProgramming/Code/CppWinForm/ www.ecs.syr.edu/faculty/fawcett/handouts/CoreTechnologies/WindowsProgramming/Code/FormWithCppThread/ www.ecs.syr.edu/faculty/fawcett/handouts/CoreTechnologies/WindowsProgramming/Code/demoCppWinForm/ Vijay Reddy found an www.albahari.com/threading/. This will be useful later on this semester. A couple of students asked about syntax for C++/CLI threads. I've done a ../CoreTechnologies/WindowsProgramming/Code/FormWithCppThread that illustrates how to create a C++/CLI child thread and communicate its results back to the main thread in a Form, using Form::Invoke.

I've fixed a couple of bugs, found by Karthick Soundararaj, handling invalid XML, and uploaded the fixes to the college server. Note that you should make sure that in your project settings you set C/C++\Code Generation\Exception handling to /EHa so your catch handlers work for Windows Structured Exceptions as well as C++ exceptions. I've added several footnotes to the Project #1 statment to clarify issues students had with its interpretation. Here's a link: ../cse687/projects/pr1s10.doc. For CSE687 Project #1 you do not have to implement a console menu or a shell, nor should the user specify a file to process in any other way than the command line. We will test your project with your submitted file and we will also torture your project with our own test file (we will name our test file on the command line of your project executive). Note that we only expect your processing to render correct output if the input is correct XML syntax. In any case, you should not allow unhandled exceptions to escape. ../CSE687/lectures/CSE687Pr1SurvivalGuide.xml Quite a few students in CSE687 are behind schedule with Project #1. I've decided to extend the due date by one week. However, anyone turning in the project on the original due date will receive a 5 point bonus. This is a Cinderella bonus as it disappears one nanosecond after midnight of the original due date. Every Friday morning, from 9:00am until Noon, I hold an open help session, for anyone taking my classes in the current semester. Come and ask whatever questions you may have about the class materials. The book C++ Primer Plus, by Stephen Prata, is in the Sci-Tech library, on reserve, for your use. You will find this text very readable, with tons of small code fragments that show you how to do almost any basic operation you may need to do. You can not take this book home, but may use it in the library for several hours. Here are some C++ tutorial links I can recommend, ordered in increasing level of detail:

www.cplusplus.com/doc/tutorial/ www.codersource.net/codersource_cppprogramming.html www.acm.org/crossroads/xrds1-1/ovp.html www.cprogramming.com/tutorial.html www.zib.de/Visual/people/mueller/Course/Tutorial/tutorial.html www.cs.wustl.edu/~schmidt/C++/index.html www.brpreiss.com/books/opus4/html/book.html This next item is from last year, but may be of use to you later in the Semester, so I'll leave it here.

CSE687 - In response to a CSE687 student's question, I've prepared an example of a global function that is overloaded to accept either an instance of a derived functor class or a pointer to a member function of another class. The functor and function pointers process the contents on an iterator argument that the global function supplies as it iterates over any type that supports iterators, e.g., strings, lists, arrays, etc.

Obviously, this is related to requirements of Project #2. You can find it here: ../CSE687/code/TemplateFunctorsEtc.