Question From a Student:

I am a CS graduate student looking at my course options for the next semester. I have completed the 2 prerequisite courses for non-cs undergraduates; CSE501 & CSE502. I am thinking about taking your CSE 422S course. I am concerned about the C++ requirement for the course. I have no practical C++ experience; my background is Java, VB, Fortran, Assembly. Do you feel this will be a problem? Do you have any suggestions?

Here is my standard answer to this question:

• CSE 422S assumes that you have taken CSE 332S (or whatever the C++/OO course is now numbered). Some number of students ignore this requirement or think that it is unimportant. Some regret it.
• The major projects (there are 2 or 3) must be written in C/C++. I don't care which although I prefer streamlined C++; i.e., I don't care about extreme reusability.
• C/C++ is just a tool ... like arithmetic.
• One of my best 422 students didn't know C/C++ ... but she/he did have a PhD in bio-medicine or something. She/He did know some Java. My best student ever in Programming Languages and Systems (use to be numbered CS 455) was a biology major with no programming experience. But he did graduate from Caltech. So, my take on it is it depends on your intellegence and what kind of a learning skills you have.
• A significant number of students who have taken our CSE 332S (C++/OO) find the C/C++ part of the projects challenging. My impression is that these students had not developed enough confidence in C/C++ while taking CSE 332S. This confidence comes from time spent in the practice of thinking about and writing non-trivial C/C++ programs.
• Here are some C/C++ things that seem to burn up student time:
  • Pointers, dynamic storage allocation, internal representation (e.g., C-string versus integer variable), vague understanding of BASIC C/C++ semantics
  • Here are some C++ things that are not required but seem to make life much easier:
    Using C++ STL map and queue templates, gdb (Gnu debugger)
• Many (Most?) students claim that 422 is the first time they had to write a real program. I think they really meant it was the first time they had to build a system by writing a program that solved a problem ... where they were given great design and implementation lattitude. The projects (in hindsight) are not real: 1) They are toys; 2) They are 500-1000 lines of code, not 100,000 lines; 3) We assume in many cases that the input is correct and put just enough code to protect us; 4) The project requirements are stable (although not completely defined), not based on the whims of a nebulous user base,; and 5) We only have a few weeks to test the code, not 6 months.
• The conceptual core of the course is NOT writing C/C++ programs although some students think it is. The core is about OS concepts and their implementation: 1) OS services offered through the system call interface and command language; 2) Concurrency (software and hardware); 3) Resource management and scheduling; 4) I/O; and 5) OS abstractions (e.g., Virtual Memory).
• Most students say they learn a lot from the course ... but that depends on the student, not the instructor.