Note:  The official web site for this course is located at: http://www.austincc.edu/baldwin/Fall07/Inew2338WebPage/Index.html

If you are viewing a copy of this page on another site, it is strongly recommended that you go to the URL given above to view the latest version of the page.

This page contains general information about the conduct of this course.  See links on the Overview page for more specific information.

Occasionally one or more of the links, which tie these online, documents together may become accidentally broken.  If you discover a broken link, or any other problem with the online documents, please notify me as soon as possible so that I can repair the problem.

Communications via Email

If you send email to me, it is imperative that you include your name and the identification of the class in which you are enrolled (INEW2338) on the Subject line of your message.  Otherwise, your message will probably be considered one of the 10,000 spam messages that I receive each month and will be deleted before I see it.

I also receive large numbers of email messages from persons all over the world asking questions about Java programming.  I don't have the time to answer all of them.  If you identify yourself as a member of my class and identify the specific class as described above, I will make it a point to try to answer your question.

It is also important that you provide a telephone number where I can contact you. I receive many email messages from students with invalid return email addresses. If you include your telephone number and your return email address doesn't work, I will usually try at least once to contact you by telephone.

Questions via Email:

From time to time you may need to ask questions via email, and I encourage you to do so.  However, please make the question as specific as possible. For example, "What is OOP?" is not a question that I can easily answer via email.

If you, like many others, procrastinate and save your questions until the weekend before an exam deadline, don't be surprised if you don't get a response from me until after the exam deadline has passed. The weekend before an exam deadline is not the time for you to begin trying to learn how to program in Java.

I am usually happy to answer questions about Java programming concepts at the level of this course.  When appropriate, please illustrate your question with a short sample program.  When you send a sample program, please observe several important rules:

• Don't send isolated code fragments.  Send a complete program that is ready for me to paste into a java file and attempt to compile.
• Make the program as simple as possible while still illustrating your question.  Eliminate all superfluous code that isn't necessary to illustrate the question.
• Make it an application (or possibly a servlet) rather than an applet, unless an applet is required to address the specific question.

Please don't waste our time by asking me to help you debug your programs.  The best way to debug is to avoid errors in the first place.  Then there won't be any bugs that require attention.

If you understand the requisite programming concepts, the only bugs that you will incur will be the result of careless errors on your part.  I won't waste my time showing you how correct for your own carelessness.

Failure to Meet Prerequisites:

Please don't ask me to teach the Introductory or Intermediate Java Programming material to you.  If you don't already understand that material, it will be your responsibility to learn it, on your own, without assistance from me.

Carelessness is costly

On June 29, 2001, which was the last Friday of the month, and was anticipated to be one of the most active trading days of the month, programmers working on a network made a careless error and shut the NASDAQ stock exchange down for several hours.  There is no way of estimating how much this cost various people around the world.

In the Spring of 2003, programmers working for a telephone company made a careless programming error and swamped the 911 emergency call center in Austin with wrong numbers for several hours.  Hopefully no one died as a result, but we will never know.

Although careless errors on your assignments may not be as costly as the errors described above, they are costly nonetheless.  In fact, the cost for making a careless error on a programming assignment is just as costly as not knowing how to write the program in the first place.  In either case, you get no credit for the program.  So, don't be careless.

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