CS 91R: Computing with Text - Spring 2025

Welcome to CS91R. Despite modern computers being largely driven by graphical interfaces, text-based user-interfaces---programs that get their input via human-readable text and provide their output via human-readable text---are incredibly powerful and pervasive. With the rise of large language models, the notion of commanding computers with natural language seems groundbreaking; however, computer scientists have long employed structured text that lives somewhere between general-purpose programming languages (e.g., C++ or Python) and natural languages (e.g., English or Chinese). This course will empower students to design, implement, and critique text-driven computer programs. Topics like the command-line (e.g., shells, redirection, pipes), scripting, scraping, text parsing & understanding, information retrieval, prompt engineering, searching with regular expressions, semi-structured data formats (e.g. HTML, XML, JSON), and other data formats will be covered. Students will learn how to prototype text-heavy applications with real-world data.

See the Schedule for each week’s reading assignment.

Here are a few other useful online resources:

By the end of the course, we hope that you will have developed the following skills:

(WORK IN PROGRESS)

Each day, you will complete an in-class assignment, a "clab" (short for in class-lab). You will work in a group of 4 people, 5 if necessary, on a clab assignment. You are expected to work on the clab during class time, sharing your screen on the in-class projectors while you work. The expectation is that you and your group will finish the clab assignment in class.

Each student will have their own clab repository. (There will be no group repositories for clabs.) In order to effectively learn the material, each student in the group should complete the clab while working together with your groupmates.

If a student does not have a laptop that day, they may add their name to the submission of another student in the group. This should not be a regular occurrence but is an acceptable way to complete the clab.

Clabs will be graded out of 3 points:

This course features regular lab assignments that account for the largest component of your course grade. Lab attendance is required by all students. Additionally, the cs labs are open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for you to use for CS91R lab assignments.

Lab assignments will typically be assigned during the lab sections and will generally be due by midnight 1 week later. You are strongly encouraged to start early!

Even if you do not fully complete a lab assignment, you should submit what you have done to receive partial credit.

You are expected to attend every class.

To help with cases of minor illnesses, athletic conflicts, or other short-term time limitations, we will drop your lowest quiz and your two lowest in-class assignments (clabs). If you miss a class, you are still responsible for the material and should arrange to get notes from another student in the class. If you miss an in-class assignment, you are strongly encouraged to complete it on your own.

All students start the course with two "late lab days" to be used at your discretion, with no questions asked. To use your extra time, you must email your professors after you have completed the lab and pushed to your repository. You do not need to inform anyone ahead of time. When you use late time, you should still expect to work on the newly-released lab during the following lab section meeting. The professors will always prioritize answering questions related to the current lab assignment.

Your late days will be counted at the granularity of full days and will be tracked on a per-student (NOT per-partnership) basis. That is, if you turn in a lab five minutes after the deadline, it counts as using one day. For partnered labs, using a late day counts towards the late days for each partner. In the rare cases in which only one partner has unused late days, that partner’s late days may be used, barring a consistent pattern of abuse.

If you feel that you need an extension on an assignment or that you are unable to attend class for two or more meetings due to a medical condition (e.g., extended illness, concussion, hospitalization) or other emergency, you must contact the dean’s office and your instructors. Faculty will coordinate with the deans to determine and provide the appropriate accommodations. Note that for illnesses, the College’s medical excuse policy, states that you must be seen and diagnosed by the Worth Health Center if you would like them to contact your class dean with corroborating medical information.

If you believe you need accommodations for a disability or a chronic medical condition, please contact Student Disability Services via email at studentdisabilityservices@swarthmore.edu to arrange an appointment to discuss your needs. As appropriate, the Office will issue students with documented disabilities or medical conditions a formal Accommodations Letter. Since accommodations require early planning and are not retroactive, please contact Student Disability Services as soon as possible.

For details about the accommodations process, visit the Student Disability Services website.

You are also welcome to contact any of the course staff privately to discuss your academic needs. However, all disability-related accommodations must be arranged, in advance, through Student Disability Services.

To receive an accommodation for a course activity you must have an official Accommodations Letter and you need to meet with the course professor to work out the details of your accommodation at least two weeks prior to any activity requiring accommodations.

(WORK IN PROGRESS)

Academic honesty is required in all your work. You will be expected to demonstrate your “theory of the program” (Peter Naur), either verbally or in written form: explain how your program solves the problem, justify your design decisions, or suggest ways your program might be modified to solve a related, but slightly different problem.

Under no circumstances may you hand in work done with or by someone else under your own name. Discussing ideas and approaches to problems with others on a general level is encouraged, but you should never share your solutions with anyone else nor allow others to share solutions with you. You may not examine solutions belonging to someone else, nor may you let anyone else look at or make a copy of your solutions. This includes, but is not limited to, obtaining solutions from students who previously took the course or solutions that can be found online. You may not share information about your solution in such a manner that a student could reconstruct your solution in a meaningful way (such as by dictation, providing a detailed outline, or discussing specific aspects of the solution). You may not share your solutions even after the due date of the assignment.

In your solutions, you are permitted to include material which was distributed in class, material which is found in any assignment textbook, and material developed by or with an assigned partner.

Use of, or consultation with, outside resources including stackoverflow, reddit, google, and generative AI (e.g., chatGPT or GitHub CoPilot) is permitted for targeted technical assistance. In these cases, you should always include detailed comments indicating which parts of the assignment you received help with and what your sources were. In these cases, be ready to demonstrate your "theory of the program." Use of outside resources should not shortcut the learning objectives of an assignment. You must have a complete understanding of any work you submit.

When working on quizzes, or similar assessments, you are not permitted to communicate with anyone about the quiz during the entire examination period (even if you have already submitted your work). You are not permitted to use any resources to complete the quiz other than those explicitly permitted by course policy. (For instance, you may not look at the course website during the quiz unless explicitly permitted by the instructor when the quiz is distributed.)

Failure to abide by these rules constitutes academic dishonesty and will lead to a hearing of the College Judiciary Committee. According to the Faculty Handbook:

"Because plagiarism is considered to be so serious a transgression, it is the opinion of the faculty that for the first offense, failure in the course and, as appropriate, suspension for a semester or deprivation of the degree in that year is suitable; for a second offense, the penalty should normally be expulsion."

This policy applies to all course work, including but not limited to code, written solutions (e.g. proofs, analyses, reports, etc.), quizzes, and so on. This is not meant to be an enumeration of all possible violations; students are responsible for seeking clarification if there is any doubt about the level of permissible communication.

The general ethos of this policy is that actions which shortcut the learning process are forbidden while actions which promote learning are encouraged. Studying lecture materials together, for example, provides an additional avenue for learning and is encouraged. Using a classmate’s solution, however, is prohibited because it avoids the learning process entirely. If you have any questions about what is or is not permissible, please contact your instructor.

Links that are related to the course may be posted here. If you have suggestions for links, let us know.