Preparing for ICS 215

I am pleased that you are considering Introduction to Scripting. Here are some things to note in advance.

Computer Requirement

Introduction to Scripting is, obviously, computer intensive. You will be installing lots of tools, and spending lots of time staring at your screen. Furthermore, you will be do a great deal of programming in the classroom. For all of these reasons, I require you get or have the following computer technology:

• A laptop computer, less than two years old, with at least a 15″ screen and 10 GB of available disk space.

You are unlikely to be successful in this course if you instead use:

• A desktop computer, because you will not be able to complete in the in-class assignments.
• A netbook, because the screen size is too small to support the complexity of problem solving required in this class.
• A laptop older than two years, because its performance and reliability is unlikely to be at an appropriate level.

Note that it is possible to buy a new laptop appropriate this class for well under $1,000. This is an investment not only in this class, but in your future as a professional software developer. With respect to operating systems, OS X or Linux is substantially preferred over Windows.

Prerequisites

To enroll in this class, you must have taken and passed ICS 211 (or equivalent). You cannot take ICS 215 if you’ve taken and failed (got less than a “B”) ICS 211. You can take ICS 215 and ICS 211 concurrently with my consent. I enforce this prerequisite firmly out of compassion for you: if you do not have at least ICS 211 under your belt before starting this class, the odds of you have an unsuccessful experience are quite high. This means you’ll drop the class at some point, and you’ve just squandered a seat that could have gone to another student. If you do not drop the class voluntarily, I will request an administrative drop for you, so please make sure you have passed ICS 211 or are taking it.

Getting a head start

Since ICS 215 is completely self directed, you have the opportunity to get a head start in the class.

1. Read the ICS 215 Rules to understand how to succeed this semester.
2. Follow the Development Environment Setup experience to install the tools you’ll be using in this course.
3. Read the ICS 215 Strategies and start planning on how you are going to approach ICS 215 Introduction to Scripting. What strategies are you going to use?
4. Skim the Regular Expressions module and start reading/studying the resources.

Bookmark this site and check back

A final preparation is to review the other pages in this site, and check back occasionally to see if anything has changed. The mailing list won’t become active until the first day of class.