January 2001
Due Dates: This assignment should be completed as early as possible, ideally it should be done immediately after the first lecture has been viewed.
Purpose: This assignment will help you become familiar with the course materials for the CSE 142 as well as the programming environment that you will be using for doing your assignments.
Many of the homework assignments will have lengthy instructions. Sometimes the important stuff is buried deep within them. Get in the habit of reading the instructions carefully:
Spending an hour or so getting familiar with the environment and Windows software will be time well spent. You can easily waste more time than this spread over the course by being unfamiliar with these tools, and you'll be too busy later to find an hour, so do it today! This applies to experienced Macintosh users, too: many Mac people have said they found switching to PCs to require much more attention than anticipated.
Computer basics: Are you a complete novice to computers? Before sitting down to work, it would be good to review section 1.2 of the textbook ("Introduction to Computer Hardware") and be sure you understand all the terms it uses.
Web: The web is used extensively for this course. Handouts and homework files are distributed over the Web. Explore the course web for the on-line version of the course, as well as the UW web site for the coures.
Microsoft Visual C++ (MSVC): MSVC is used at UW as the programming environment for the course. Students computing at home are not required to use MSVC - some choose to use other environments. Some of the instructions are directed towards MSVC users. The graphics package that is used in later assignments available for MSVC as well as some other platforms. If you have convenient access to MSVC this is probably the best choice. (Either version 5.0 or 6.0 may be used). If you are a sophisticated user or are good at figuring out how to get things working on your computer, you can probably get by using a different environment - although there may be some extra work involved.
If you can tear yourself away from the Web, try opening up your programming environment. For MSVC, click the "Start" button, then select "Programs", then "Microsoft Visual Studio 6.0", and finally "Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0" again. Just open it, maybe try a few buttons, and close it. Don't worry, you don't have to understand anything about it yet. For the assignment, you will have to use your programming environment to get a C program to actually run. MSVC is an industrial-strength system (i.e., complicated), but we'll need to use only parts of it.
On to the Treasure Hunt. If you've read this far, your reward is not far off. The Treasure Hunt is the rest of part 0A. Then go on and do part 0B.
For part B, you'll need the source file here. Don't worry about what this means until you've finished Part A and have read through the instructions for Part B.