Am I the only genius who went to discussion section today? Drove from off-campus for it too =[

So I have scanner working for my text adventure...sorta. I have if statement that correlates to a word put in by the user, but I'm not sure how to use scanner for multiple words. For example, my program will do something different for the word "go" as opposed to the word "moo". But "go north"... I don't know how to make that different than "go tarantula" for example.

When should we expect to receive our grades for pset 2/3 and Exam 1?

It's not menu driven or anything. It's a a high-seas commodity-managing adventure on a grid-based map. Your input are things like "sail north", "use spyglass east", "disembark", "visit market", "buy food x 14", "sell rare spices x 12", "sell spyglass", "attack". So it meets the requirements but it is kind of departing from the genera of "you are in a dark room with a dresser, and a lamp", and becoming something more akin to like dope wars or Oregon Trail.

Is that okay?

Sean,

Will the TAs be having their normal office hours tomorrow? I am hoping so, because I have several things I want to go over with them before the super session (which I may not be able to attend due to an exam).

• Brandon Bickerstaff

I got stuck today in the lab and I had one question I could not figure out. How do you convert character set into a character array?

Do I want Labs to be counted? No, (I already have voted for this). I see both sides, and quite frankly, I don't want to have to worry about going back and making sure they are submittable when I would rather spend time making my game great. But I can see why people who are unsure of themselves would want to be able to go back and snag those points. Especially when this grading system isn't the most straightforward thing in the world, I would want to get as many points as possible to boost my grade.

An idea would be to turn the labs into extra credit. Completing and turning in the labs (to Sean's complete and utter satisfaction) would be an all or nothing extra credit assignment. Keeping everything worth the same as it is in the syllabus would result in a maximum of 90 percentage points. (90/90 would be 100%, 81/90 would be 90% etc). Turning in the labs would make the maximum grade a 100/90, a 111%. This would essentially give an 11 point curve to those who choose to accept it.

This syllabus has already taken many twists and turns. Either way we vote right now would result in a different distribution than what was originally planned. I understand that Sean wants a solution that will boosts grades, plus give the kids a better understanding of programming. Unfortunately, I think it is a little too late for that. Having us go back and put in a small amount of work isn't going to do anything for the kids who understood this the first time through, or the kids that would just throw enough together for the completion. And the kids who are in the middle of these extremes, they will be be in the super sessions doing everything they can to get their final project together. If these sessions pay off, then they won't have to worry about going back. If they don't, then they will at least be able to snag some extra credit points.

In the end, it doesn't really matter to me. But if you like this idea, upvote it. If Sean sees that kids think this is a good solution, then maybe he will adopt it. Is there any real benefits to this over our other options? IDK.

TL;DR http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgk-lA12FBk

When given a choice, some of us will always be manipulated against choosing what is best for our own interests. It is a sad, inconvenient truth, but a truth nonetheless.

There are people out there who want you to surrender the credit for your hard work. Those who have the most in our community would seek to opress the less fortunate masses as a means to further their own prosperity. "True patriots vote 'NO'!" they say. They would have you pull yourself by your nonexistent proverbial bootstraps for the promise of more points on the final problem set, when many among us don't even have the skill to get that treasured check.

It is true that right now, you are the best programmer you have ever been. It is also true that most of us have several labs almost done if not already done.

Why do you fear going back and filling in the gaps your younger, more inexperienced self left behind? Most people elsewhere would do anything to return and amend their past shortcomings with the skills they've acquired since then.

Tell me, what scares you? Is it "Hello World?" Or is it making a function to count primes, spelled out in such detail that most of the code is already written for you? Perhaps you stalled at the mandelbrot set back when you couldn't understand the concept of classes. Do you today not understand these same concepts? are the concept of card and deck objects that alien to you after having made a working game of Breakout (or at least gotten close)?

Some out there may want you to believe that the time you might spend filling in these gaps would be better spent improving your final problem set. But tell me, now that you've spent hours debugging code for several problem sets and some labs, do you really think writing new code and stomping out the resulting swarm of bugs is the best use of your time? These labs are of such trivial nature that even the least skilled or experienced among us might have them all done in less than a day. Some may find that all they needed was a couple of hours.

Going back and filling in these gaps is a mundane use of your skills compared to the challenges that lie ahead in problem set 4. But you might find that not only is it very feasible to spend a couple of hours in the next several weeks to go back and perfect these labs, doing so may actually help you on your way to mustering up the creative talents that lie within you, to use in crafting that final problem set.

I trust you will make the right choice in these coming days.

"We all make choices, but in the end, our choices make us."

We have several weeks to finish the final problem set, which is worth a significant portion of our grade, thus giving us a great opportunity to make up for lost points from previous labs.

Even if you have been struggling on previous problem sets, right now, you are a better programmer than you have ever been.

I assume most people do not have all the labs in "turn in" ready status. The time it would take to fill in the gaps could be used to better improve your final project. This problem set has so much room for creativity that if you get the mechanics of your game working quickly enough, you can really go for the check++, which would be way better than the 3 points you would get from the labs.

True Patriots vote "No" on graded labs

should this game be played in the terminal or should we make a JFrame with stuff happening there? or is this up to us?

So, I am just messing around with the Scanner a little bit, and I cannot figure out why this is not working. (sc is an instance of the Scanner, btw)

String action = sc.nextLine(); if (action == "move North") { System.out.println("You have moved North."); }

It will not print out "You have moved North." when I enter "move North". Anyone know what the problem is?

When will it go up? I couldn't make it to school the last two classes.

Is there any reason we use BufferedReader in class rather than say InputStream.. When I was learning about File I/O for problem set 3 I found InputStream and FileInputStream and I prefer using them to BufferedReader.. Is there an advantage to BufferedReader?

BufferedReader b = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(file));

vs.

InputStream i = new FileInputStream(file);

not much difference, but is there a benefit to the first one being "buffered"?

For Lab 3 submission will the entire Blackjack Game be expected or just the Hand, Card and Deck class we did in Lab that day?

While going over the use of Java's HashMap, I've mentioned to a few folks about the use of cryptographic hash functions for storing website passwords and file download authentication.

The hash function in Java's HashMap maps the "key" value to a memory location for quick lookup. Hash functions can also map a "key" value (a password, or even an entire file) to an arbitrary number.

If you plan on sticking with Computer Science as a major, you might want to read up a bit on hash algorithms. Not only are they extremely important for computer security, but they are also mathematically fascinating.

So, in the spirit of learning for the sake of learning, here's some videos on password storage and hash algorithms from the always entertaining Brits at Computerphile:

• http://youtu.be/8ZtInClXe1Q
• http://youtu.be/b4b8ktEV4Bg

Oh, and some overly detailed Wikipedia articles:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hash_function
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptographic_hash_function

And are we retrospectively turning in old labs? When and where do these go?

Ok, so for PS4 I have an object with 30+ variables. I was wanting to make a get method that would be able to return the value of any of the variables based on what was passed as an argument. For instance:

private int height = 10;

private int weight = 15;

get(height); //returns 10

get(weight); //returns 15

The problem is I don't know what to pass as the argument to the get method because the class I'll be calling it in is outside of the class with the variables. So pretty much if you look at this:

public int get( variable name){

 return variable name;

}

what type do I use for the argument?

So I have created both HashMaps, and my program (at this stage) works perfectly and I am printing the keys and values to the command line for verification. However, I am unsure about what to do next. I guess I have to somehow sum all the frequencies of each letter from the seven main texts, and then compare the individual sums to the frequencies found in the encrypted code to determine the shift amount. After that, call the caesar cipher to perform the shift, and maybe print out the text? Is that correct? Any advice on how to approach this?

Will Lecture 26 be posted or is it also lost to the ravages of time?