Introductions

Assignment: Introductions

This is an ungraded psuedo-assignment (completion counts toward participation) in which you introduce yourself to the course staff and do a few things to get ready for the rest of CS240. Please complete all parts by the end of the day on Wednesday, January 24.

Contents

Parts

1. Familiarize yourself with the course

Read through the syllabus and tentative course schedule. Jot down any questions that arise to either (1) ask on your form in Task 2 or (2) ask in class.

2. Introduce yourself to the course staff

Introduce yourself to the instructors and tutors by filling out the forms at these links:

  • Create a CS240 CourseIntros introduction. Be sure to upload a brief video in which you pronounce your full name (including both first and last name). (CourseIntros was created by Wellesley faculty alum Susan Buck.)

  • Fill out the CS240 Get To Know You form

  • Since most of you have not met me (Alexa) before: even if you don’t have any questions, please attend one of my help hour sessions during the first two weeks of the course, just so I have a chance to meet you 1-on-1! Likewise if you have not had a course with Peter before.

3. Fill out the help hours poll

Please fill out this when2meet poll indicating all hours during a typical week when you would be available to attend instructor and tutor help hours. Please sign in with both your first and last name.

  • We’ll use this information to help design our schedule of regular help hour times. These times might depend on the due day for the current assignment.

If regularly scheduled help hour times are inconvenient for you, we would be happy to find another time to meet with you. Just message us on Zulip or use Alexa’s to find a mutually agreeable meeting time.

4. Use a terminal to connect to the CS department server (tempest)

For many CS240 assignments (any ones that involve writing code), you will need to connect to the CS Dept Server (cs.wellesley.edu = tempest.wellesley.edu). You may already have such an account depending on when you took CS111 and CS230. If you do not yet have such an account, please fill out this form right away.

You can use the ssh program to securely log into the department server from any computer.

Note: If you see the error Could not establish connection to cs.wellesley.edu: Remote host key has changed, port forwarding is disabled., you’ll need to remove the old host key your computer has saved. Open the file ~/.ssh/known_hosts and delete any lines containing cs.wellesley.edu. After that, try to connect again.

The ssh program runs in a terminal window on your computer or as part of your IDE (integrated development environment, a program where you both edit and run code). Below are various ways that you can run it:

  • Regardless of what kind of laptop you have, if you have Visual Studio Code (VSCode) IDE and have installed its Remote Development Extension Pack, you can use that to connect to cs.wellesley.edu remotely via ssh. The benefit of using VSCode’s remote extension is that you can easily open and edit files (or open entire folders) in the IDE, using your cursor and keyboard. VSCode’s remote extension is what I (Alexa) personally use in my research.

    See more information here. In brief, after you install VSCode and the remove extension pack, you will need to:

    1. Open the Command Palette (command+shift+P on Mac, ctrl+shift+P on Windows), search ssh and select RemoteSSH - Add New SSH Host... then add ssh <YourAccountName>@cs.wellesley.edu where YourAccountName is your tempest account name. E.g., user (gdome would connect using the command ssh gdome@cs.wellesley.edu).
    2. Type your password for the department server (If you have forgotten it, contact Scott Anderson to reset it.)
    3. Press connect.
    4. The next time you connect, you can open the Command Palette and select RemoteSSH - Connect To Host....
    5. You can also set up SSH keys so that you don’t need to type your password each time you connect. See these instructions (provided by Wellesley’s CS304) here.

  • You can also use a terminal application to ssh into the department server directly. In order to connect, you will be prompted for the password for your CS Dept account. Once you are connected, you can use terminal commands as if you were running them on the department server. To edit files, you’ll need to use a Terminal-based editor, such as Emacs or Vim.

    On a Mac, open Terminal and connect to tempest by executing the following command:

    ssh <YourAccountName>@cs.wellesley.edu

    where YourAccountName is your tempest account name. E.g., user gdome would connect using the command

    ssh gdome@cs.wellesley.edu

    On Windows, you can use the Microsoft Windows Terminal application. If it is not installed on your computer, you can download and install it from Microsoft. Use ssh command similar to the ones described for the Mac terminal:

    ssh YourAccountName@cs.wellesley.edu

    On Linux, use can use your distribution’s default terminal.

  • Another option is to use the PuTTY Terminal

If you encounter any problems with this part, post on Zulip with details of what you are stuck on and Alexa or Peter will help.