Assignment 0

Due at 11:59pm on Monday, 10/1/2018

There will be NO demo for this assignment

This assignment is intended to get you up and running with some of the tools we'll be using in this course. It should be very straightforward. It has two parts.

1. Sign up for Piazza

Use this link to sign up for CS 261 on Piazza using your ONID email address: https://piazza.com/oregonstate/fall2018/cs261

We'll be using Piazza in this course for Q&A because it's geared towards students helping other students with the class. Anyone can post or answer a question on Piazza, even anonymously, and the instructor and TAs can revise and endorse student answers, which means you can be confident in the quality of the response.

You are strongly encouraged to post any class-related querstions to Piazza first instead of emailing the instructor or TAs. You should also get in the habit of checking in to Piazza to answer other students' questions. This will not only enable everyone to get help quickly, but it will also help you improve your understanding of the material, since teaching someone else is the best way to learn something.

As an incentive to use Piazza, extra credit will be awarded to the most active Piazza participants at the end of the term.

2. Use Git and GitHub

The other tool we'll be using quite a bit for this course is Git/GitHub. You're already here looking at this assignment, so we know you've got at least some Git/GitHub skills. Practice a little more by following these steps:

1. If you're new to Git and GitHub, take a few minutes to follow these two tutorials:

   • Git: https://try.github.io/
   • GitHub: https://guides.github.com/activities/hello-world/

   We'll be using Git and GitHub heavily in this course, so it'll pay off to put in the time now to learn how to use them.

2. Clone this assignment repository from GitHub onto your development machine. Within the cloned assignment directory on your development machine, create a new file about_me.md that contains these details:

   • Your name and what you prefer to be called (if it's different)
   • Your OSU email address (e.g. hessro@oregonstate.edu)
   • Your major and year of study
   • The answer to this question: have you signed up for Piazza?
   • A description of the most interesting fact about you or the most unique experience you've had. You don't have to spend too much time on this: include only what you can think of and write down in two minutes, max.

   You can refer to this brief guide on Markdown (essentially enhanced .txt) for formatting help: https://guides.github.com/features/mastering-markdown/.

3. Use Git commands to add and commit your new file to the local assignment repository on your development machine and to push the changes to your local repository back to your remote assignment repository on GitHub.

4. Add to your assignment directory an image file containing a photo with a clear picture of your face, commit this file into your local assignment repository, and push the changes to your local repository back to your remote assignment repository on GitHub.

   Your assignment repository will be private, which means only you, I, and the course's TAs will be able to see the photo you put there. Some folks may still be uncomfortable uploading photos of themselves to the internet. If you are one of these folks, contact me, and we can make alternative arrangements.

Submission

We'll be using GitHub Classroom for this assignment, and you will submit your assignment via GitHub. Just make sure your completed files are committed and pushed by the assignment's deadline to the master branch of the GitHub repo that was created for you by GitHub Classroom. A good way to check whether your files are safely submitted is to look at the master branch of your assignment repo on the github.com website (i.e. https://github.com/OSU-CS261-F18/assignment-0-YourGitHubUsername/). If your changes show up there, you can consider your files submitted.

Grading criteria

The assignment is worth 100 total points, broken down as follows:

• 50 points: Signed up for Piazza
• 50 points: Followed the instructions for using Git/GitHub to add files to your assignment repo
  • 25 points: Added about_me.md with the specified info
  • 25 points: Added an image file with a photo containing a clear picture of your face