Complete the following tasks. Do not delay in this, as each of these things is crucial to your successful completion of this course. Each task will have a list of tips and information that you can show or hide by clicking the pink-text "Tips" buttonsbutton At the end of this page, you will see instructions for what to hand in.

Your Tasks:

Before you begin, read the directions in full so that you have an understanding of what is expected of you here.
Start on these tasks immediately, as they make take longer than you initially anticipate. The sooner you start, the sooner you are able to identify and address any difficulties.
Log into your personal account on the Gradescope website, and complete the preliminary "Tester" questionnaire. This serves two important purposes: Helping me collect some basic information for record-keeping efficiency, AND ensuring that you are familiar with the platform already, before Midterm and Final Exams are coming due!
Set up your Linux account and enroll in this class.
- Here is a link to the UMB CS Dept. Portal website, where you may apply for a Linux account (click Register) or log into an existing one (click Login).
- If you are applying for a NEW Linux account:
  1. Please choose a username that will make it very obvious which student it belongs to -- such as first initial and last name. (Mine, for example, is ckelly)
  2. Before setting a password, please carefully review the (admittedly complex) requirements, just to save yourself the trouble of multiple failed attempts before success!
  3. Finally, please make it your priority to remember and/or (securely) record both username and password, as well as keeping them "handy" so that you can always easily and swiftly access your Linux account.
- If someone would like to volunteer, we can have an actual in-class demo of the apply process using the (deprecated) command-line interface.
- NOTE: Bear in mind, also, that I personally have no authority or access to the CS Dept's internal system, so I cannot directly assist with your Linux account or related troubles. Instead, you will need to contact the department's own system administrators, at the following email address: operator@cs.umb.edu
Create a file in your Linux home directory called .umb_email, with your desired forwarding e-mail address as its content.
- Access to the Linux system, your (OS-specific) command-line interface application:
  - Windows systems: The most recent version of Windows have SSH commands already built in, so just open either the Command Prompt or Windows PowerShell utilities! Otherwise...
    - You can download, install, and use the PuTTY utility; at the page, you can find a link to download the appropriate version of putty.exe -- either 32-bit or 64-bit, but most likely the latter.
    - Another command line program for Windows that you may wish to consider is Cygwin, which provides a Linux-like command-line environment for users who prefer this!
  - Mac and Linux/Unix systems: Open the official Terminal app (Mac OS X) or other CLI application.
  - After launching the relevant CLI utility, you should be able to access the system typing the following command and pressing Enter:
    ssh your username@users.cs.umb.edu
    (Replace "your_username" with your actual username, of course!)
- In addition, many other utilities out there will allow you to access the Linux system via a graphical user interface (GUI), such as: WinSCP (for Windows system) and FileZilla (multi-platform!). Many beginning CS/IT students find the GUI more intuitive and user-friendly, naturally!
- For whichever program you use, your hostname will be users.cs.umb.edu and username will be, well, your username. The typical port number is 22, but you usually do not have to supply this explicitly, since the software already knows!
- One way to accomplish your end-goal (i.e., creating your .umb_email file) is to carry out the following steps, as depicted in the screen-capture below:
  
  (NOTE: You will, of course, want to replace my Gmail address with your own UMass Boston e-mail address! The one that ends with @umb.edu)
In your Linux home directory, there will be a sub-directory of the same name as this class. Inside the directory for this class, create a sub-directory called homework. You can accomplish this by entering the following series of commands:
cd $HOME/cs110
mkdir homework
Alternately, the same end result can also be accompanied via a GUI application, instead, if you prefer that -- keep on the lookout for in-class live demonstrations, too!
Download/install Python v.3 – textbook uses 3.4.4 but newer 3.X versions are fine – and get set up with an editing and executing tool.
- Download Here, choosing the appropriate installer for your own operating system!
- I presume that Python 3 will work on everyone's personal computer; if it will not, however, then consult with me so that we can work out some alternative.
- If you are unable to get these things working, then you can test your code out here or here to ensure that it executes and runs as expected.
- As far as editing tools go, even a simple "bare bones" plain-text editor will suffice, but you are assuredly far better off with some dedicated integrated development environment (IDE).
- If you go to this link, you can use the first video as a guide to the setup process. (However, you will be using a different version, likely a significantly newer one, rather than the older one from his demo.) It shows you how to download Python and start using it, in conjunction with IDLE.
- One text editor I often recommend is Sublime Text because it offers quite a rich set of useful features than a standard text editor, and it can be integrated with the Python code interpreter. (You will see me, in particular, using this one extensively in class demonstrations, for what it's worth...)
Answer the following questions (saved in a file called memo.txt to be uploaded in the appropriate folder):
1. What is the code number that I e-mailed to you?
2. What e-mail address are you using for this course?
3. Which IDE did you decide to use for this class?
4. Tell me a bit about the process of carrying out these tasks. What went well? What was challenging? Is there anything else you want to tell me -- or have questions about?
(For Mac users: Because this is just a simple text file, you can create it with the system's native TextEdit app, but the app's default behavior is to save files in Rich-Text Format (RTF), so you will need to explicitly direct the program to save it as plain-text specifically, instead!)