Due Saturday, September 7, before midnight

The goals for this lab assignment are:

Work through the following sections and ask if you have questions!

Start by reading through all of the class web page!

Pay special attention to the Schedule, Academic Integrity, and How to succeed in CS21 sections!

You should get into the habit of checking the class page weekly. The class topics, lab assignments, weekly readings, and announcements will be posted to the class schedule each week.

From the CS homepage please read the user agreement and lab rules:

You may also want to peruse our lab documentation page:

Log into a CS lab machine and open a terminal window (click the icon).

Your prompt probably looks something like this, though there will likely be a machine name other than flamingo:

As a shorthand, we will just use the $ symbol to indicate the prompt:

Our update21 command copies any files your professors want you to have from them to your cs21 directory. It’s a good habit to run update21 each time you log in. If you haven’t run it already, this will create your cs21/labs/00 directory.

Enter each of these commands below at the prompt. Do not type the # or anything after that: those are just helpful hints to explain what you are typing.

If update21 doesn’t work for you, please alert your lab instructor. It’s probably our fault.

Read through our UsingUnix web pages and try the various Unix commands. These pages are just to help you get comfortable with BASH, a Unix command language and shell that implements the user interface running in the terminal (there’s nothing you have to write or turn in). Make sure you understand the following commands:

Optionally, you may also want to look over the ssh command:

Beginning this week we will start using the text editor in class, so you need to at least know the basics. All professors teaching this course will use the Visual Studio Code text editor. We will refer to Visual Studio Code by the nickname "v-s-code", and we will use the command code to run the editor.

To practice using vscode, open up the practice.py file in your cs21/labs/00 directory and then follow the instructions in that file.

Here’s a list of keyboard shortcuts to help you learn the vscode text editor. Make sure you at least know how to open a new file, add text, and then save it to the correct directory.

If you already know another Unix editor (like vim or emacs), or at some point want to learn one that is less resource-intensive than code, you are welcome to use it instead of code. We will use code as the official editor for CS21 (the one that all the instructors and ninjas know, and the one that we will demo in lecture), but you are welcome to use any editor that we have on our system.

For more practice with editing, and so that we can learn a little about you, edit the bio.txt file in your cs21/labs/00 directory:

Note: this file should have a few simple questions in it for you to answer. If you don’t see those questions, make sure you are in the cs21/labs/00 directory (i.e., run the pwd command), and/or run the update21 command to make sure you get the initial file from your professor.

Once you are satisfied with your bio.txt file, hand it in by typing handin21 at the Unix prompt.

You may run handin21 as many times as you like. Each time you run it, new versions of your files will be submitted (i.e., any files you’ve made changes to). Running handin21 after you finish a program, after you make any major changes, and at the end of the day (before you log out) is a good habit to get into.

This semester we’ll be using EdSTEM, an online Q&A forum for class discussion, help with labs, clarifications, and announcements that pertain to all sections of CS 21. Our EdSTEM page is https://edstem.org/us/courses/64602, and we have EdSTEM guidelines on the course home page.

For this first lab, just to get comfortable using EdSTEM, choose at least one part of your bio.txt file above to reply (non-anonymously) to the thread already created in EdStem. The title of the post is "Lab 0 - for section 8 post here". You can include where you are from, something else you are doing at Swarthmore, your entire bio, or whatever you prefer.

After each lab, please complete the short Google Forms questionnaire. Please select the right lab number (Lab 00) from the dropdown menu on the first question.

Once you’re done with that, you should run handin21 again.

As part of Lab 0, each student must visit the office of either their lecture or lab instructor. If you can come during our official office hours, that is ideal, but you are also welcome to stop by any time we are around. You do not have to have a specific question, you can just drop by to introduce yourself and learn where our offices are. We will have sign in sheets to check you off.