Please check this page frequently for important announcements.
It is your responsibility to check this page regularly.
- (00/08/18) I will be away on holidays until September 5th. Please
feel free to contact me by e-mail when I return. It was a pleasure
teaching you, and I wish you all the best with the rest of your
studies!
- (00/08/17) Your non-official final marks are now available
on the course web page. It is important that you realize that
these marks are only tentative, and the faculty reserves the
right to modify or withhold them if they please. Please check
ROSI to determine your official mark in this course.
- (00/08/10) I have now added 0.4 to all A4 marks for Biljana and
Petra's sections (check the web page to verify your mark). As
mentioned below, no adjustments will be made to the A4 marks for
Fred's section. For Sid's section, I added 0.4 marks to all
students, except for 5, as the deduction had not been made to these
assignments.
- (00/08/08) I have decided that I will bring all unclaimed
assignments with me to the final examination room. If you finish
your exam early and want to pick up your assignment, please do so
QUIETLY so that you don't disturb those who are still writing. If
there is an error with the marking of your A4 (besides the
error in Part 1b #8), please bring the assignment to me on Tuesday
August 15th (from 2-4 p.m and 6-8 p.m.) and I will remark it. This
will be your last chance to have assignments remarked.
- (00/08/08) Please note that all student's in Petra and Biljana's
sections and some students in Sid's section will have lost 0.4
marks for the question in Part 1b #8 of assignment 4 (The answer
should have been AER=8, THU=10, STI=0, CHI=3). This was due to an
error in the answer key. I will be adding 0.4 marks to the
assignments that lost these marks, so please do not bring your
assignment to me to be remarked if you lost these marks. I will
post an announcement to let you know when I've added these marks.
Fred realized that there was a problem with the marking key and did
not deduct these marks, so that is why students in Fred's section
will not receive these marks back. Towards the end of marking, Sid
realized the problem, and this is why only some students in Sid's
section will be given back the 0.4 mark.
- (00/08/07) Unclaimed assignments can be picked up from my office on
Tuesday August 8th (3-7 p.m.), and on Tuesday August 15th (from 2-4
p.m and from 6-8 p.m.). I will also bring them to the final
examination room. All assignment remarks must be given to me on
August 15th, otherwise I will not be able to reflect the mark
change in your final mark. Please remember that the mark for a
remarked assignment may go up or down, so only submit assignments
that definitely have an error in the marking.
After August 15th, I will leave all unclaimed assignments in the
CSSU office (1st floor in the Engineering Annex building). The
CSSU office does not have regular hours during the summer, so it
will be hard for you to know when you can pick up your assignments
from here (unless you wait until the fall term starts in
September).
- (00/08/07) Since you do not have a tutorial this week, I'll extend
my office hours to be from 3:30 p.m. until 7:00 p.m. on Tuesday
August 8th. I may need to leave briefly (15 minutes) during that
time period, but I will leave a note on the door saying when I'll
be back.
- (00/07/26) The problems with the MS Access wizards on the
computers in the lab have now been fixed.
- (00/07/18) I will provide links to any general questions that
I answer about Assignment 4 here. Question
one,
two.
- (00/07/18) MS Access will be made available in the lab
tomorrow (July 19th).
- (00/07/10) I will provide links to any general questions that
I answer about Assignment 3 here. Question
one,
two,
three,
four,
five.
- (00/07/07) I have recently added the description for assignment
4 to the course web site. I have also scheduled extra TA office
hours for A4. Please see the TA office hour schedule at the
bottom of the People web page. A4
will take a fair amount of time, so do not leave it to the
last minute.
- (00/07/07) Please visit me during my office hours if you'd like
to take a look at a copy of the midterm exam that has the correct
answers circled.
- (00/07/07) The midterm marks are now available on the course web
site. I've raised all midterm marks by 6% to bring the average up
to 64.5%. See the "MTAj" (adjusted midterm mark) that is reported
for you on the marks web page. I would not worry too much if your
midterm mark is low, as the higher assignment marks should make up
for the lower midterm marks. As I mentioned earlier, I will also
scale the final marks in the course if the average is too low.
- (00/07/04) This is a reminder that we will be watching a video
during the lecture next week. If you miss the video, you can view
it on your own in the AV library. See the
Lectures web page for more information.
- (00/06/30) There will be no TA office hour on Monday July 3rd, due to
the Canada day weekend. I have moved this TA office hour to
Wednesday July 24th at 4-5 p.m. I felt that you may need
extra help at this time because it is the week before A4 is
due. See the complete TA office hour schedule on the course web
page (available from the "People" link).
- (00/06/28) I've added more detailed information about the breakdown
of questions on the midterm to the Exams web
page.
- (00/06/26) The software at CDF-PC will be switched from MS Visual
Basic 5.0 to MS Office 97 on Tuesday July 4th. The computers with
the larger hard drives, will have both software packages installed
all term.
- (00/06/23) One day extension for A2.
Because this is the hardest assignment in this course, I've decided
to give you a one day extension. You may either submit A2 during
your tutorial on Tuesday June 27th as usual or you may submit it
without penalty to the late drop box (just outside room SF2305A) by
11:30 p.m. on Wed. June 28th. You will
lose 30% if you submit your assignment to the late drop box by 9:00
p.m. on Thursday June 29th. (Note: the Sandford Fleming building
is locked at 9:30 p.m. on weekdays.) You are encouraged to hand in
your assignment early so that you will have plenty of time to study
for the midterm test, which will take place on Tuesday July 4th, at
6:00 p.m.
- (00/06/22) Any corrections for the course package will be added to
the course package corrections
web page. Please make sure that you've made all corrections to your
copy of the course package.
- (00/06/21) I'll add links to questions that I've answered about
assignment 2 here. Question
one,
two.
(On 00/06/22, I added a longer explanation for the
functions that you have to write, so you might want to read
question one again.)
- (00/06/21) I've just posted a new version of the starter code
for A2 that has one main change. It adds the statement Option
Explicit to the (General)(Declarations) section of the program
and it adds variable declarations for all for loop counters. By
adding "Option Explicit", this means that all variables must be
explicitly declared. This helps to eliminate problems associated
with spelling variable names wrong. If you have already downloaded
the assignment, you do not need to download it again. If you
haven't started yet, you might want to download this newer version
instead.
- (00/06/21) All marks for assignment 1 are now available on the
marks web page. Please check your marks, and let me know if
your mark has not been recorded correctly.
- (00/06/20) I've added more office hours for this week. I'll hold
office hours from 2-4 p.m. on Friday June 23rd in my office (room
SF2302D). Bring your A2 questions!
- (00/06/20) If your program is not responding, it may be in an
infinite loop (the condition for the loop never becomes true, so
the loop executes forever). The simplest way to stop your program
(without typing CTRL+ALT+DEL and going to the task manager to shut
down the task), is to press CTRL+BREAK. This will take you back
into your program and show you which line of code was executed
last.
- (00/06/19) A student wrote, I have finished by Dec2Bin. It
works when I input 9 digits number like "999999999". However, when
I input more than 9 digits, for example 10 digits, "9999999999", it
doesn't work. How can I fix it? My answer is...
You do not have to worry about this limitation. Since the largest
number that can be stored in a Long is 2147483647, your program
does not need to work for numbers that are larger than this.
- (00/06/13) You are not responsible for all of the material covered
in the last set of Visual Basic lecture notes (the part called
"Visual Basic 3" or "Lec8" in the course package). We'll skip
pages Lec8-12 through Lec8-18.
- (00/06/13) The last two functions that you need to write for
Assignment 2 can be greatly simplified by calling two of the other
functions that you wrote for this assignment. I'll discuss this in
more detail in the next lecture.
- (00/06/13) For assignment 2, you are not allowed to use the Visual
Basic built-in functions that convert between the different number
bases. For example, you cannot use the built-in "Oct" function.
- (00/06/12) I've ordered more copies of the "Essentials of VB6
Programming" optional VB text book. They'll be available in the
book store by Thursday or Friday of this week.
- (00/06/12) Here is some information that you should read if you're
planning to use Visual Basic from home.
- (00/06/09) Assignment #2 is now available on the course web page.
Also included are three files containing code that we have given
you. You'll need to download these three files to your hard
drive. Based on past experience, Visual Basic is the area of the
course that most students have had the most trouble with. It is
very important that you attend all tutorials and lectures, and that
you get to the lab early to learn the Visual Basic environment and
to try out the examples that the TAs cover in the tutorials. Take
advantage of the TA office hours.
- (00/06/09) In case you missed the announcements that were made
in the last couple of lectures. There was a correction to page 4
of 14 in the Number Systems section of the course package. The
number should be 735 instead of 737. Even if you did not order
a course package, I did order a few extras, so you can still
get one from me during my office hours.
- (00/06/06) If you have followed all of the directions to copy
your files to the H:\public_html folder, but are still unable to
view your A1 files on the web page, you might find these
instructions from Petra helpful.
- (00/05/30) Here is some information about
how to print and how to open existing
files using Notepad.
- (00/05/30) I received e-mail from a few students who were unable
to pickup their course package in my office hours today. I will be
in my office between 4-5 p.m. on Thursday June 1st, so please stop
by to pick up your course package at that time. You can also pick
it up any Tuesday during my office hours. I'm really sorry that I
incorrectly wrote the wrong room for my office on the overhead that
I presented to the day section today ... I hope you were able to
figure out that my office is really SF2302D! If anyone needs extra
HTML help, you could also stop by my office between 4-5 p.m. on
Thursday June 1st.
- (00/05/29) If you are having any problems in the course (related
to the lecture material or to HTML), please feel free to visit me
during my office hours (4-6 p.m. on Tuesday in SF2302D). Also
please stop by my office hours to pick up your course package this
week.
- (00/05/29) Here are e-mail messages that I've answered
for students about assignment 1: Message
one, message
two, and message
three.
- (00/05/18) Assignment #1 is now available on the course web
page. Please print out a copy for yourself. Don't forget to print
the cover page too.
- (00/05/18) The course packages will be available for pickup in my
office on Friday May 26th, from 5:30-6:30 p.m. If you cannot pick
it up at this time, you can pick it up during my office hours on
Tuesday May 29th. We will be placing the order for the course
packages next Tuesday May 23rd, so if you haven't ordered your copy
yet, you'll have another chance after the lecture on Tuesday May
23rd. Please leave a downpayment, and I will order a copy for
you.
If you were not at the first lecture, here is some information
about the course package. It will be about 200 pages long and the
cost is $30. It contains all lecture slides that will be presented
in the course (4 slides per page), as well as supplementary
material about Number Systems, HTML, Visual Basic, an essay on
Computers in Society, and a sample midterm from the Fall 1999
course that I taught.
- (00/05/18) If you missed the first lecture, please note that
tutorials will start during the second week of classes. The course
outline indicates which tutorial session you have been
assigned to.
- (00/05/18) The TAs for some of the tutorial sections have changed.
Please consult the course outline on the
course web page to see who is your tutor. The course web page
will always contain the most up-to-date version of the course
outline.