MIS 121, Sections 4 and 5
Intro Business Programming
Fall, 1998
Instructor: Mick McQuaid
updated: 10 Dec 1998, 14:55
A local mfg firm wants me
to recommend a computer nerd!
Are you interested in working
part-time starting inJanuary?
Do you have any networking and website maintenance experience or skills ?
Contact Mick ASAP for
more info!
Email: mis121@www.ic.arizona.edu
(for all mail from students and any other mail officially pertaining
to this course
---will be archived for instructors in future semesters)
Please say "MIS121" in the header of any
course-related email!
Email: mmcquaid@bpa.arizona.edu
(for communication with the instructor on non-MIS 121 matters)
U. Cluster
I've reorganized my files on the u. cluster. You can only access
them at
u. cluster links
, not by logging in to your
shell.u.arizona.edu
account.
Office Hours
My office hours will be 12:30--2PM, Tuesday and Thursday,
and 3:30--5PM on Tuesday, and by appointment. You can see
the results of my office hour survey
here.
After the 2PM class on Tuesday, I usually stay in 208A to
answer questions. If you come to my Tuesday 3:30 office hours,
please check for me in 208A if I haven't come back over to
204X.
Yiying Hua, TA, keeps office hours in Park lab T/Th 9:30AM
-- 2:30PM.
Yuka Kubonoya, TA, keeps office hours in Park Lab M/W
10:30AM -- 1:30PM and 4:15PM -- 6:15PM.
Resources
Please check out the resources
page for info on recruiting, editors, and Unix.
Lectures
Here are some lectures in both slides and notes format. They may
be viewed with Adobe Acrobat Reader (available at www.adobe.com).
Syllabus
Here is the official
Syllabus in
.pdf format. Obtain Acrobat
Reader (free) from www.adobe.com to view it.
Programming Language
The Undergraduate Curriculum Committee has decided to switch
from Pascal to C in MIS121 and MIS301. Summer Session I,
1998 was the first semester in which C was the
programming language for MIS121.
Here is a quotation from an article by Michael Cusumano on
page 14 of the Fall 1997 issue of Sloan Management Review.
Cusumano published a bestseller on Microsoft last year and
is a noted authority on Japanese software development as
well as on Microsoft's software development methods:
"In addition, nearly all Microsoft teams work at a single
site with common development languages (primarily C, with
some C++), common coding styles, and standardized
development tools."
I am interested in information like the above about firms using C
for critical projects and appreciate any hints about documented use
of C!
Textbook(s)
There is a required textbook and
many other relevant books, as well as many
relevant websites. Your decision about what book(s) to buy
should be informed by your goals, your learning style, and
your current level of skill / knowledge.
Required Textbook
Problem Solving and Program Design in C, Second Edition
The above URL was unavailable on 19 Mar 98, but has been available
at least sporadically since.
There were a couple of paragraphs of text at the above URL,
including:
Using a subset of ANSI C, Problem Solving and Program
Design in C, Second Edition teaches a disciplined approach
to solving problems and to applying widely accepted
software engineering methods to design program solutions.
Intended for a first course in programming, this text
assumes no prior knowledge of computers or programming.
Written to be accessible to students, concepts are
presented in an order that makes sense to the beginning
programmer --not in units dictated by the structure of the
language. A broad selection of case studies and exercises
allow an instructor to design an introductory programming
course in C for computer science majors or for students
from a wide range of other disciplines. While retaining its
proven problem solving approach, the new edition has been
refined to become an even stronger teaching tool.
- Introduces the difficult concept of pointers, uniquely
and effectively, over four separate chapters
- Covers user-defined functions with input parameters in
Chapter 3, allowing students to do more meaningful programs
early
- Provides complete coverage of loop constructs (Chapter
5) and complete coverage of stacks (Chapter 8 Arrays,
Chapter 10 Recursion, Chapter 14 Dynamic Memory Allocation)
- Includes a complete appendix of ANSI C Standard Library
Functions for reference
- Reinforces key concepts using strong pedagogical
features including program style boxes, syntax displays,
end-of-section exercises, case studies, common error
sections, programming projects, and others
Required Account
All students in this course are required to use an account
on shell.u.arizona.edu, which is available to all registered
UofA students. Look at
telnet://account.ccit.arizona.edu
for more information about obtaining this account. You will
be given an assignment requiring the use of this account on
your first day of class! (So establishing the account ASAP
is advisable)