Course Info

1. The class home page for this semester is https://sites.google.com/berkeley.edu/cs164! Bookmark it!! All course handouts, answers to frequently asked questions, lecture notes, and updates on assignments will be posted on the home page. 

2. The homepage of this site will also provide an overview of the week in progress, with the following:

   1. Topic being covered + Lecture slides

   2. Homeworks and Discussions

3. For discussion, questions, and as the class form we will be using EdDiscussion.

4. For written assignment submissions we will be using Gradescope.

5. For programming assignment submission we will be using Github Classroom. Note: More information on this will be provided when assignments are released.

1. Textbook: "A. Aho, R. Sethi, and J. D. Ullman, "Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools", 2nd edition, Addison-Wesley, 2006."

2. Chocopy Language Manual & Reference

3. Chocopy RISC-V Implementation Guide

4. Another book you might find useful is "Unix in a Nutshell (System V Edition)" by Gilly, published by O'Reilly & Associates. As its name suggests, the book is a short guide to working on a Unix system, including descriptions of common Unix commands and utilities. 

Most weeks will involve a written assignment covering material presented in lecture and the readings. The written assignments are to be completed individually. The purpose of the assignments is to give you practice with the theoretical material of the course. Spending time on the written assignments pays off on the exams. 

Written assignments are due on the date and time as mentioned in the assignment PDF/Gradescope. Write your name, email address, and section on your assignment. Assignments must be submitted via https://gradescope.com/. Please do not bring assignments to staff offices.

The course project consists of three programming assignments. Taken together, the three form a complete implementation of a variant of Python. 

Start the programming assignments early! Completing the course project is a large, complex, and rewarding task, which is made much easier by giving adequate forethought to design. The course schedule allows ample time to complete the assignments, so take advantage of it. Programs will be evaluated for correctness, organization, and documentation.

Documentation and structuring should be incorporated into programs from the beginning. Neither the instructors, teaching assistants, nor readers will help with incomprehensible programs. 

Programming assignments should be done in teams of two. Teamwork imposes burdens of communication and coordination, but has the benefits of more thoughtful designs and cleaner programs. Team programming is also the norm in the professional world.

Students on a team are expected to participate equally in the effort and to be thoroughly familiar with all aspects of the joint work. Both members bear full responsibility for the completion of assignments. Partners turn in one solution for each programming assignment; each member receives the same grade for the assignment. If a partnership is not going well, the teaching assistants will help to negotiate new partnerships. Teams may not be dissolved in the middle of an assignment.

Programming assignments are due at 5:00 PM on the date in the course schedule. Programming assignments will be turned in electronically via Github Classroom. Links to assignments will be posted!

Each student gets an automatic extension of 100 hours. You can use the extension on any programming assignment(s) during the semester (in increments that are rounded up to the nearest integer). For instance, you can hand in one assignment 100 hours late, or each of three assignments 33 hours late. For group project assignments, the slip time will be deducted from each team member's remaining slip time. When you hand in a late assignment, you must identify in the README file the following: (i) how late this assignment is, and (ii) how much of the total slip time you have left. No assignment will be accepted more then 100 hours late. After you have used up your slip time, any assignment handed in late will be marked off 1% per hour. This policy does not apply to the written assignments. Late written assignments will receive no credit. 

There will be one midterm exam and one final. 

The midterm is scheduled for Monday, March 6th. Rooms will be announced.
The final exam is scheduled for Tuesday, May 9th, 3pm-6pm. Rooms will be announced.
There will be no early or make-up exams. Please plan accordingly!

Regrade requests will only be accepted for programming assignments and exams. In either case, all regrade requests must be received within one week upon receiving your score. For exams, we will only consider regrades if we made a mistake in the grading of your exam. Note that we reserve the right to regrade the entire exam. For programming assignments, we will only consider regrades if we made a mistake in the grading of your project or if there was a small bug in your project that caused you to lose at least 10 points. A small bug is one that can be fixed by changing very few lines of code without affecting the design or the algorithm in a significant way. All such requests must be made to your TA (not to the readers). If we accept the regrade request we will re-run the autograder and will give you 50% of the score difference.

Students are expected to attend discussion sections. Relevant material, especially the details of the programming assignments and software tools, will be covered only in discussion sections. Here is the discussion section schedule: 

It is impossible to pass the course without doing the programming assignments. The relative weight of the components of your grade will be approximately:

Written assignments         5%

Course project I (PA1)      15%

Course project II (PA2)     15%

Course project III (PA3)    15%

Midterm                          20%

Final                               30%

It is expected that all students understand University policies on academic honesty. Cheating on assignments or exams is very serious and will not be tolerated. In this course, we will use a variation of the standard policy. In this class, it is permissible to talk to other students about assignments, to discuss particular solutions, and even to receive partial solutions (including code) from others. However, all assistance and cooperation must be cited in the assignment write-up. If you receive any assistance from anyone other than course staff or your partner on an assignment, you must acknowledge in the write-up for that assignment who gave assistance and what assistance was given. Grading will take into account how much help a student received from others (the more help, the lower the grade). Failure to acknowledge sources is plagiarism and will be treated as a serious breach of academic honesty. No assistance may be given or received on exams. 

You should know that fairly sophisticated plagiarism detection software will be used on the programming assignments.