Basics

The CSE undergraduate labs are open to you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. A code will be announced in class that will allow you entry to the locked rooms. While you can feel free to use any room, any room with Dell machines (which boot into either Linux or Windows) will allow you to login directly to your CSE8A environment (served from ieng6.ucsd.edu).

CSE B260 will additionally have tutors specifically for the CSE8A class available during the hours listed below (note that these hours may change during the quarter, visit often to see the latest tutor hours). Tutors for the CSE11 class may also be able to answer your questions, but will not be able to answer specific questions about homework.
NOTE: Tutors will not be available to give interviews after 6 PM on the date that an assigment is due (in order to dedicate their time to those finishing the assignment).

Lab hours schedule:

Sunday Monday Tues Wed Thurs Fri Sat 9am-10am Gary Gary Gary 10am-11am Gary 10-11 Mark Gary Gary 11-am-12 Mark LAB Mark DISCUSSION 12-1pm Mark LAB Mark 1-2pm Mark Mark 2-3pm Maria Mark 3-4pm Gary CLASS Maria CLASS CLASS 4-5pm Gary Maria Maria 5-6pm Maria Maria Maria Maria 6-7pm William William 7-8pm William William William 8-9pm William William 9-10pm William PSA DUE INTERVIEWS INTERVIEWS

Why go to Open Lab?

Can't I just do my homework at home or by logging in from home? Yes. You may use a program like PuTTY to remotely log in to ieng6.ucsd.edu and be in the same programming environment as you can find in the lab. We don't recommend that you do your homeworks on your own installation of Java on a different machine (say, your home machine) because we REQUIRE that your code compile and run on ieng6. Different machines can behave differently, and since we don't have access to whatever machine you have to test and run your program, we have to require that it work correctly on ieng6 -- the machine dedicated for this class.

Secondly, we recommend that you do at least some of your work in the lab. Our tutoring staff will be in lab many hours to assist you in learning the "practice" of programming. Use their time and skills wisely. See the notes below on "How to talk to a tutor".

How to log into ieng6 served machines (e.g. CSE Basement lab machines)

A special login for CSE8A will be provided for you from UCSD's ACS (Academic Computing Services) Department. Your login will look something like "cs8fzz". The course number followed by two letters. The password for this account is different from your UCSD network password. However, ACS has a web site where you can look at ALL accounts and passwords you have on any UCSD system, so if you forget you can look it up. Use the Account Lookup Tool available off of the ACS web site.

How to talk to a tutor

You can get the most help, the most quickly from a tutor by observing a few guidelines before asking for help. The primary objective is to think like an engineering professional. If someone was coming to ask you for help, what would you want them to present to you and what would you have expected them to have tried? This may be a hard question to answer the first few weeks of class, but should become easier shortly.

Some suggestions:

• Provide a printout of your code, or have the code open in an editing window for the tutor to see. Programs are detailed beasts, likely we'll have to look at the specifics of your program in order to best help you.
• Be able to state clearly and exactly the problem you are having. This may mean you want to write down on a piece of paper EXACTLY the error message you are getting (including what line it is on). Particularly, do you have:
  • A general UNIX question (how to use an editor, copy a file, etc).
  • An error compiling your program? (the javac command does not complete without errors). Here we need to know the EXACT text of the FIRST error message, including what "line" in the source code the compiler is unhappy with.
  • A runtime error. This is an error produced by Java when you attempt to run your program with some specific input. We need to know the EXACT text again and also the input you gave the program that produced the error.
  • A logic error. This occurs when your program both compiles and runs without errors, but does not give the result that you expected. Here, we need to know what output you expected, why, and what output you are currently getting.

Tutors do expect you to have worked on your problem before you talk to them. They expect you to have read thoroughly the homework problem statement (though you can ask them questions about it) and to be able to discuss what you think your program is doing -- or to have specific questions for them about how a programming construct works.

Life as a computing professional involves facing new problems and using a scientific method to work towards a solution in a logical manner. Tutors appreciate efforts in that vein, and will be better able to help those students who can communicate with them in this way. Nonetheless, tutors are there to help provide you with some of the background knowledge they have learned, to make your acquisition of these problem solving skills less painful.