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HCDE310: Communication Design and Rationale - Schedule

WeekDates
section: A · B
TopicReading (optional in parens)Homework
1 Sept 24, 26 Sep 25, 27

Introduction to the Course, Computers, and Python.

Operations on strings and lists. Version control.

Zelle ch 1
(Downey ch 1)

Downey ch 2
Zelle ch 2, 4.1-4.4, 4.6
Zelle 11.2 — 11.2.2

HW0: SW installation; writing your first program

HW1: String and list operations; setting up an svn repository.

2 Oct 1, 3 Oct 2, 4

File operations; Iteration on sequences

Supplement: Expressions and operator precedence; More on strings

Conditionals

Zelle ch 3
(Downey ch 6 & 7)

Zelle ch 7
Downey ch 4

HW2: Count chars, words, lines in a file.
3 Oct 8, 10 Oct 9, 11

Dictionary data structure

Mashups & APIs

Zelle 11.6;
Zelle 4.5
(Downey ch 5)

HW3: Contributor counts

P0: Adding value to data

4 Oct 15, 17 Oct 16, 18

Functions. Parameter passing and returning values

Indefinite iteration; nested data structure, and nested iteration

Zelle ch 6
(Downey ch 6 & 7)
HW4: Refactor HW3 using functions; output as .csv files; generate charts in Google Docs, Excel, or D3
5 Oct 22, 24 Oct 23, 25

JSON processing

Objects and Classes

Zelle ch 8

Zelle ch 10
(Downey chapters 15-18)

HW5: Calculate likes and comment frequencies from a JSON feed
6 Oct 29, 31 Oct 30, Nov 1

URL lib; Try/except; REST APIs;

Mid-quarter course feedback

Project intro (30 min)

Tutorial on urllib2;
Zelle 7.4

HW6: Refactor HW5 using classes—some extra methods needed.
7 Nov 5, 7 Nov 6, 8

Tuples; Sorting; list comprehensions; enumerate; zip

Tuples, sorting;

List comprehensions: Wikipedia; another explanation w/ nice examples

enumerate, zip

P1: Project proposal.

HW7: Fetching and processing a live feed.

8 Nov 14, 19 Nov 13, 15 TBD TBD

HW8: Sorting; more data processing.

9 Nov 21, 26 Nov 20, 27

HTML & CSS

Review

HTML tutorial

Severance ch 2;
CSS tutorial

Review: exercises from Downey & Zelle.

Review!
10 Nov 28, Dec 3 Nov 29, Dec 4

Exam (in class)

Project time / app engine?

R1: Resource writeup

HW9: Create a feed processor that displays a tag cloud as a web page

11 Dec 5 Dec 6 flex day Project time
F P2: Final projects due
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