This is a first course in computer programming, and is meant for people with an interest in interactive graphics and animation. No previous experience or knowledge of computer programming is needed.
Weekly lectures occur 8:30am to 9:30am every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday in room 5280 (Surrey). You should attend every lecture. If you miss a lecture, then it is your responsibility to find out what you missed.
The lectures follow the schedule below.
The teaching assistant (TA) is:
The course instructor is Oren Shklarsky (oshklars [at] sfu [dot] ca). Feel free to email him any time to ask questions. His office hours are every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 9:30am to 10:30am in office 4134. (Surrey).
Warning
Make sure to include CMPT 166 in the subject line of your email!
Sometimes we will send you email via the course mailing list. Check the 166 mailing list archive if you miss a message.
Please note that while we try to answer email as quickly as possible, we can’t promise immediate responses.
Weekly labs are every Wednesday from 9:30am to 12:20pm in room 4050 (Surrey). You should attend every lab. Some labs may cover specific course topics. If you miss a lab, then it is your responsibility to find out what you missed.
Important
There are no labs (tutorials) in the first week of classes!
50% Assignments
Important: Sometimes instead of giving you a mark based on the assignment work you submit, we may replace an assignment with an oral quiz based on the assignment. Such a quiz is meant to test your understanding of what you submitted, and may ask you to do things like explain your work, make small changes to it, and so on. This is mainly to deal with suspected academic dishonesty issues, and so it may be applied either at random, or to specific individuals we suspect may not be following the course ethics guidelines.
Occasionally it may be necessary to change a due date of an assignment. If that happens, you will be given as much advance notice as possible.
20% Midterm exam A 50-minute closed-book exam scheduled to be held Monday February 25th in the same place and at the same time as the lecture.
30% Final exam A comprehensive 3-hour closed-book exam on Friday April 19th, from 8:30am to 11:30am. See here for details. It will cover the entire course.
Note
Students must attain at least %40 in the final exam in order to obtain a clear pass (C or better). The Grading FAQ explains what this means in more detail.
The Grading FAQ has answers to many commonly asked questions about final grades and how they may be calculated.
An online forum has been opened for students of CMPT 166, as a place to ask questions about assignments, tests, course material, etc.
After clicking login in the upper-right corner, login with your SFU computing ID, and select the CMPT 166 Discussion Board tab, followed by the forums link on the left.
Feel free to post any questions you have under the relevant topic. The course instructor and TA will access this website frequently to answer questions.
All students in this course are expected to follow a few basic rules of ethical conduct:
While you don’t need to buy any books for this course, if you do want more information and examples of Processing, here are a few Processing books you might be interested in:
The Processing website lists a number of other books.
See also
Check out Khan Academy for an easy way to test out shapes without compiling