Skip to main content

Homework 0: Introduction and Environment Setup

Welcome to CIS 1210!

CIS 1210 is the combination of the mathematical analysis of CIS 1600 and the programming knowledge of CIS 1200. We’ll be exploring both data structures and algorithms. In this assignment, we aim to give you practice in both as you will be implementing a maze solving algorithm using simple data structures.

Important Note: Don’t be fooled by the homework name or number. This is a significant assignment with multiple parts that is by no means conceptually trivial. It is critical that you start early! Please be sure to read the write-up carefully and in its entirety.

Environment Setup

The days of Codio are over! As we move on to more complex projects, a more robust integrated development environment (IDE) with better debugging support will become necessary. CIS 1210’s supported IDE is IntelliJ IDEA, which we will highly encourage you to download (if you don’t already have it from CIS 1200). We have provided many resources to get you up and running including:

We highly recommend taking the time to review and install all of the resources above. Even if you already have IntelliJ installed, you should go through all of the above resources, as importing and setting up projects is done differently in CIS 1210 than CIS 1200. Spending time to do that now will ensure you start off on the right track, and have all the necessary tools to succeed in CIS 1210 programming assignments.

This section is very important:

Part of adhering to our style guide is using 4 spaces instead of tabs to indent your code. Follow the below steps before you start coding to avoid having to go back and switch all your tabs to spaces!

For IntelliJ

For Eclipse (NOTE: this is being deprecated)

Need help? We have many office hours to help you get up and running. It’s difficult to help with setup issues over Ed.

OHQ.io Sign-up

In our attempts to provide help faster to students, we’ve moved to an online queue system for office hours, called OHQ.io.

It’s as simple as logging in with your PennKey and entering your name. If you aren’t already enrolled in the course on OHQ, just hit “Join Course”, search “CIS 1210”, and choose the appropriate semester. If you encounter difficulties setting up your account, please post on Ed.

What’s Next?

You are now ready to move on to the first part of the assignment, Homework 0: Explosive Debugging.