First Lab Announcements

Welcome to the CS125 Labs!

Purpose of labs

Since students are mainly new users and/or don't have experience with programming, practice is key to learning the material - lab exercises each week provide practice.

Scheduled labs are your reserved times for computer use, with tutor assistance.

If lab exercises are finished within the lab time, there is the chance to start assignments with tutor assistance available.

There is also a strong correlation of those who do labs and those who do well in the course. Doing the labs will aid in understanding the material and in doing later assignments.

Lab exercises and assignments

Lab exercises for each week are provided on the course web site. You should be able to complete them within the scheduled lab time; however, in case you can't, lab exercises for the week are due the Monday following your lab at 8:30am. You may start your lab exercises for the week early, if desired. NOTE: If you are a late registrant, try to complete Lab 01 as soon as possible, but before your Lab 02 is due at the latest; if you can't submit (i.e., you get an error when your try), let a tutor know.

Assignments are every two weeks and also posted on the web site. You will be able to do some portion of an assignment after finishing each week's lab exercises - start assignments early to avoid last-minute submission problems that may prevent you getting credit.

Timed Exercises

"What you should know" sections

This section is provided in every lab and is used to highlight bits of information covered in lectures that you should know. It is by no means a replacement to lectures as it only skims through a few points, but is a helpful review prior to the lab. Many of the common questions will be answered here.

Lab marks

The lab exercises are there for your practice. You get one mark for a reasonable attempt for each lab exercise. (Since practice is key, there are no part-marks for part-practice.)

Working from home

You may work at home (instructions for installing the required DrJava software is supplied under the Resources link on the web page) - however, we also encourage use of labs since the tutors will be available for assistance. The labs also use Mac OS X which is different from your Windows PC. During the timed lab exercises, held in the Mac lab, you will be expected to know the basics of navigating Mac OS X and little assistance will be given in this area.

It should also be noted that tutors often given invaluable advice and hints to students during the labs such as informing students how to use the Java Documentation.

Working in the lab outside of scheduled lab time

The lab is available outside of scheduled labs - check the door schedule for when it is free for general use. Note that no tutor assistance is available in the lab during general use times.

Storing your work

Always save your course work to the cs125 folder that has already been created on your student.cs UNIX account (your U: drive if you are working in the lab). Every time you work from home, transfer your work to the cs125 folder on your student.cs account as soon as possible (see instructions under Resources link - e.g. mywaterloo as ftp). student.cs is backed up regularly, so if something happens to your home computer, some version of your work may be recoverable, but only if you transferred your files there.

Lab answers

Lab answers can be requested at the end of each lab. The answers will be e-mailed to you after the lab due date has passed . Solutions for each question will only be provided if you made an attempt at the question. You may resubmit lab work and re-request answers after the lab deadline, but you will not get credit for this. However, this is an excellent way to practice for midterms and exams.