Class time: MW 13:45 – 15:25 [sec 1]
Class Location: Pereira 202
Class time: TTh 13:45 – 15:25 [sec 2]
Class Location: Pereira 109
Lab Mgr.: Masao Kitimura
Doolan 104, 310.338.8100
Course Main Landing Page
Prerequisite[s]: CMSI 2120 — Data Structures
or
CMSI 3630 – Data Structures and Algorithms for Engineering
or
Consent of Instructor/Dept. Chair
Professor: B.J. Johnson, PhD
robert.johnson@lmu.edu
Office Hrs: Mon — Thur, 10:30 - 12:30
Office Location: Doolan 220
Dept. Admin.: Tanya Kapoor
Doolan 101, 310.338.5149
[Dedicated to the memory of Professor Phil Dorin, teacher, mentor and friend.]
Course Description from the Latest University Bulletin
Exploration of computing system operation with a focus on programming at levels with minimal translation between code and the information that the computer can access and manipulate directly. Topics include: encoding, decoding, and manipulation of bit representations for integers, floating-point numbers, characters, and machine instructions; the C programming language up to strings, pointers, and arrays; assembly languages in various architectures up to calling conventions and the stack; introduction to graphics processor architecture and instructions; programming tasks utilizing system calls and other operating system interfaces.
Note on Prerequisites [click to read]
Course Executive Summary [click to read]
Course Learning Outcomes
…My Hope and Intent For You…
Upon successful completion of the course, you will be able to:
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Practice Websites to Help You
If you require additional practice with the …or just do an Interent search or ask an A.I. chatbot!
In addition you can use other professors' web sites [either LMU professors or from other
schools].
Here are the general topic categories we will cover during the course week-by-week, along with
the list of project deliverables and homework assignments and when they are due. All of this
information is available, in more detail, on the class schedule page
which you can get from the Reading Assignments
Readings are assigned to help with understanding the concepts that will be presented each week.
You are responsible for reading, watching, and thinking about each one. Here is the reading list:
Homework Assignments And Their Weekly Due Dates
All written homework assignments are due at the beginning of the class on the
date they are due. The normal due date is the second session of the week that the assignment
is due which means Wednesday for the Monday-Wednesday sections, and Thursday for the
Tuesday-Thursday sections. Deviation from this process requires prior consent of the
instructor, NOT coming in at the start of class when the assignment is
due and asking for an extention.
The following are the 'rules of the road' for homework assignments:
Here is the list of homework assignments:
Every effort is made to ensure assignments, test dates, quiz dates, required deliverables, and
all due dates are prominently posted on these pages; it is your responsibility to make
sure you know what is due and when it is due.
There will also be weekly More Homework Details [click to read]
There will be impromptu quizzes during the semester, usually near the
end of the first class day of the week. These are designed to allow you immediate practice with
the material for that day/week. These are not for score, just for practice. These quizzes will
be done using a tool called Kahoot, which will be explained to
you during class during the first and second week of class.
There will be four formal quizzes, but no midterm exam.
Quizzes are in-person, hand-written tests for which you must be present.
NOTE: the first date below is for Wednesdays [section 01]/second date is for Thursdays [section
02].
There will be a final exam. The final exam will take place according to the
registrar's final exam schedule at
this link.
Grades for the course will come from your homework assignments, your participation in the class, the
quizzes, and your final exam. Quizzes will be Details of the topics covered in the course, along with a more specific schedule of what happens
when, is available on a separate page of this site on the
class schedule page which you can get from the CLASS PAGES drop-down
at the top of any/every web page of this site.
Lots of people have lots of advice, but here are two particularly good items which I have
blatently stolen from Dr. Toal [with his permission, of course]:
Course content will be delivered using a combination of lecture, discussion, problem-based
learning, group work, projects, presentations, critiques, community-based learning, portfolios,
etc.
Usually, the first class meeting of the week introduces a new concept, while the second
meeting of the week is an You will work in groups of two or three in this course, with two-person groups being the
usual norm. The in-class exercises follow a form of There are NO REQUIRED TEXTBOOKS FOR THIS COURSE.
There are a number of books that address the concepts and topics we will study, but they are
all very expensive. While they do collect the information all in one place for convenience,
you can find all that information on the Internet if you just apply yourself a bit. So instead
of having to pay top dollar for an expensive textbook that you may only use for this course,
the main source for I will also be presenting information from some textbooks that I have on my office bookshelf,
as well as some material from on-line texts which are very good resources. This material will
likely be given to you as handouts during the semester. Doing it this way will allow you to
have free access to information that otherwise would cost you well over US$100 for a 'doorstop'
of a textbook.
Although we won't be covering these resources in their entirety for this course,
we will be using them as primary resources. There will be some readings assigned
from some of them, and you'll need to look up information from others.
There is a great deal of HEADS-UP! Be alerted that the final two homework sets and several of the
final in-class exercises will involve assembly language programming. For those homework
assignments, it is advisable to NOT WAIT UNTIL THE NIGHT BEFORE THE ASSIGNMENT IS DUE to
start working on it. There will be no extensions given!
Grades for the course are assigned according to the weighting factors shown in the tables
below.
Final letter grades will be assigned based on the following scale: Also of note…
All work is evaluated for both technical merit and quality of written and/or oral presentation.
Find yourself a good spelling and grammar checker, or a trusted human editor, if you are
having any difficulty with the rules of standard English language usage. Another excellent resource
is the Academic Resource Center [ARC],
located on the south side of Daum Hall. The center takes appointments, and also allows drop-in
consultation sessions, and they have a number of good benefits. Call (310) 338-2847 to
schedule an appointment.
Another thing to remember is, your coding
style is just as important a part of your assignment evaluations as correctly running
code. I WILL NOT HESITATE to take points off for code that has hard-coded numbers,
lack of proper comments, poorly aligned indenting, etc. EVEN IF THE CODE RUNS CORRECTLY! Also remember that I compile and run your code from the command line
so just because it works in your editor or IDE is not a guarantee that it will work for me.
Spend the extra few minutes to get your code to work the way it will be evaluated, since I
will not be entertaining FAIR WARNING!!! DANGER
WILL ROBINSON!!! FAIR WARNING!!!
FAIR WARNING!!! DANGER
WILL ROBINSON!!! FAIR WARNING!!!
Use of Technology
You will need access to a computer of some variety.
…Well, Duh…
If you don't have a computer available, work with Masao Kitamura the lab manager to get
something set up. Of course, you can simply GO to the Keck lab and use one of those amazing
and wonderful computers there.
If you are using a Windows computer, you should download and install both a
"C" compiler and a 'nasm' assembler from the web links given on the
Week one web page.
If you are on a Mac with an M1, M2, M3, or M4 processor, you'll need to make sure
that the You will also need to install and use some sort of text editor into which you can type
your code in ASCII/Unicode text-only form. You cannot use a word processor such as Microsoft Word or
Mac's TextEdit [unless you configure it properly] or other word-processing software which puts in
special characters that the You can certainly use Notepad [on Windows] or TextEdit [on Mac, if properly configured for
plain text] to edit your source code, but it can be difficult to collaborate with these tools
due to the lack of line numbers at the left margin. Also, there is no syntax coloring in
those editors. On Mac, in the terminal window you can use the SPECIAL NOTE:
Note that I don't use VSCode since I don't like or trust all the whistles and bells.
I use a very basic editor only, so I won't be able to help you with problems
with your VSCode configurations. For help with that, you'll need to talk to one of the
stellar TA's in the Keck lab in Doolan Hall, room 112, or get some help from a classmate.
That said, one of the things I notice most often is problems with the built-in command pane in
VSCode. Many people have problems with that configuration not working, not working correctly,
or causing other problems. My solution to that is always Besides, getting yourself familiar with the way the typed commands work on your computer is a
GOOD thing to know — don't be a GUI-bound programmer! Yeah, I know, there are lots of
cool things that tools can do for you, but many of them only work after you've configured them
properly, while the command line is ALWAYS AVAILABLE WITH NO CONFIGURATIONS NEEDED!
OK, end of rant…
Attendance, Absences, and Participation
Students are expected to attend classes as part of the expected workload, as explained above.
You should arrive on time to all course meetings, prepared to engage in the course content.
Arriving late or leaving early disrupts the learning experience. You are expected to notify the
instructor in advance whenever possible if you will miss a class or if you anticipate arriving
late or leaving early. You are expected to participate in all class activities —
participation in this course is measured by how much you engage in the content and the
activities. Activities are provided to assist your learning and help your progress toward the
final assignments. As such, no assignments are optional unless they are labeled as optional.
Obviously, if you skip too many classes, you will likely not do well in the course, since you
will miss important parts of the material; this is a simple and self-fulfilling prophecy.
I want to emphasize that I care about your learning. As part of your
learning process in this class, I would like to invite you to evaluate yourself and
participate in your own assessment. It is important to me to know how you are doing –
for example, are you understanding the concepts, are you able to put them into real-life
situations and examples, are you connecting and engaging with the material, are the
explanations clear to you. That is part of why there are Another thing — part of your class participation is to do the weekly in-class exercises
and upload them to your GitHub repository. You will need to create the repository in the form
that is given on the week one page, so that I can find them. These
submissions will *NOT* be a part of your course grade other than as part of your participation.
The class participation rubric appears with the grading stuff in the tables further down the
page.
Expected Workload
In accordance with the
LMU Credit Hour
Policy, this 4-unit course will require an average of 12 hours of work per week,
which includes the time spent in class and lab sessions. This work will consist of
homework, in-class work, watching and commenting on some videos and publications, and
reading/study/discussion of provided materials.
Course Evaluations
Student feedback on this course provides valuable information for continued
improvement. All students are expected to fairly and thoughtfully complete a course evaluation
for this course. All course evaluations for the Seaver College of Science and Engineering are
administered online through the Blue™ evaluation system in BrightSpace. You
will receive several e-mail notifications at your Lion e-mail address when the evaluation form
is available near the end of the term.
Academic Honesty and Integrity
Loyola Marymount University is a community dedicated to academic excellence,
student-centered education, and the Jesuit and Marymount traditions. As such, the
University expects all members of its community to act with honesty and integrity at
all times, especially in their academic work. Academic honesty respects the
intellectual and creative work of others, flows from dedication and pride in
performing one's own best work, and is essential if true learning is to take place.
As an LMU Lion, by the Lion's Code, you are pledged to join the discourse of the
academy with honesty of voice and integrity of scholarship.
Academic dishonesty will be treated as an extremely serious matter, with severe
consequences that can range from receiving no credit for an assignment or test to failing the class, to
expulsion.
For an additional resource, see and the Academic honesty includes the appropriate use of technology as an aid for learning and productivity.
This includes but is not limited to LLM-based generative artificial intelligence tools such as ChatGPT,
Gemini, and Copilot.
Modern GenAI provides fast solutions to a variety of computing problems but must be used responsibly to
get the most out of your education. GenAI will not always be helpful, especially when asked to write
code for scenarios it cannot recognize. It cannot independently validate the code that it produces, and
will frequently produce bugs and security vulnerabilities, making things worse for you. It will not be
available for job interviews. As a student and future software professional, you have a moral and
ethical responsibility to deeply understand every line of the software you author and should therefore
employ GenAI in your coursework sparingly, especially when its use might rob you of the stretch-zone
learning that comes from crafting programs on your own.
That said, there are several acceptable use cases of GenAI in programmatic assignments, including:
Remember the four DO use technologies such as GenAI to Augment ✅,
Amplify ✅ and
Accelerate ✅ your learning;
NEVER use technology to Avoid ❌ learning.
Be Responsible!:
Generally, using GenAI and related tools without knowing what you are doing often leads to poor
homework submissions that rarely achieve a grade higher than an F on their own merits, simply due to
hallucinations and an inability to carry out tasks as they were assigned [even with good prompts].
Also, professors and TAs are GenAI users themselves and will be able to easily detect inappropriate
student use of these tools. The teaching staff will try to steer you back on track should we feel
like you are giving up on your learning.
If you would like to use GenAI appropriately as a learner, see
this short
introductory article. And if you are a TA, see
this
article by Jeff Olson on how to help teach students to use GenAI.
Special Accommodations
The DSS Office offers resources to enable students with physical, learning, ADD/ADHD, psychiatric
disabilities and those on the autism spectrum to achieve maximum independence while pursuing their
educational goals. Staff specialists interact with all areas of the University to eliminate physical and
attitudinal barriers. Students must provide documentation for their disability from an appropriate
licensed professional. Services are offered to students who have established disabilities under state and
federal laws. We also advise students, faculty and staff regarding disability issues. Students who need
reasonable modifications, special assistance, academic accommodations or housing accommodations should
direct their request to the DSS Office as soon as possible. All discussions will remain confidential.
The DSS Office is located in Von der Ahe Rm. 150, and may be reached by email at
dsslmu@lmu.edu or phone at (310) 338-4216. Please visit
http://www.lmu.edu/dss for additional information.
Students should also keep in mind that resources are available through the Library
[https://library.lmu.edu] and Information Technology Services
[https://its.lmu.edu]. The DSS Office can help students connect with
the appropriate person at the Library and ITS.
Respect For Self And Others
As an LMU Lion, by the Lion's
code, you are pledged to join the discourse of the academy with honesty of voice and integrity of
scholarship and to show respect for staff, professors, and other students.
As an LMU Lion, by the
Lion's
code, you are pledged to join the discourse of the academy with honesty of voice
and integrity of scholarship and to show respect for staff, professors, and other students.
The following LMU documents are available to reference:
For more information on this or any other conduct issues, please refer to the Student Codes and Policies
section in the Community
Standards. The Lion's Code, Student Conduct Code, Honor Code and Process, and information on many
other policies are available from that link. You can find any and all other related data from the
Office
of Student Conduct & Community Responsibility web page. Also check the main
Student Affairs Department Website.
Expectations for Classroom Behavior
Electronic Devices: Pretty easy — please turn off your cell phone ringer during
class time. That's it for me! However…
The official LMU language for this is:
Emergency Preparedness
Public Safety can be reached 24/7/365 at 310.338.2893 [or x222 from a campus phone]. In a life-threatening
emergency, call 911 first and then call Public Safety if possible. To report an incident, call Public
Safety, submit an e-report on the Public Safety website or via the Rave Guardian mobile app, or visit
Public Safety in Foley Annex. Review evacuation information and other safety tips posted in each
learning space. Make sure you're registered to receive emergency alerts – confirm your contact
information in PROWL, and also download Rave Guardian in the Apple or Google Play store. For more
information and emergency preparedness tips, visit
https://publicsafety.lmu.edu.
To report an emergency or suspicious activity, contact the LMU Department of Public Safety by phone (x222
or 310-338-2893) or at the nearest emergency call box. In the event of an evacuation, follow the
evacuation signage throughout the building to the designated safe refuge area where you will receive
further instruction from Public Safety or a Building Captain.
For purposes of evacuating the building, our For more safety information and preparedness tips, visit
http://www.lmu.edu/emergency.
Office Hours / Communication / Contact Information
Office hours are listed at the top of this syllabus page. They are also posted on the nameplate
outside of my office door in Doolan Hall. I will make every effort to be available during those hours,
and if I cannot for some emergency reason, I'll make sure you all know about it in advance if at all
possible. Office hours will be held in person in my office, Doolan 220.
I am also always available by e-mail: my LMU mail address
YOU MUST CHECK YOUR LION EMAIL ADDRESS OF RECORD. I will
start the semester's communications by sending all email blasts to everyone's I am on slack, but I don't use it or check it very often so you are better off e-mailing me if you
need a quick turnaround. If you don't mind waiting a day or so, then slack can work.
Tentative Nature of the Syllabus
If necessary, this syllabus and its contents are subject to revision. Students are responsible for any
changes or modifications announced or distributed in class, emailed to students' LMU Lion accounts or
posted on LMU's course management system, Brightspace. Students should not rely on secondhand
word-of-mouth from classmates. If you are absent from an in-person or online class meeting,
it is your responsibility to check Brightspace [and/or the course website] and to check with the
professor to see if you missed any important class announcements.
C
language, or basically ANY programming
language, there are quite a few online tutorial sites which you can use to hone your skills.
Here are links to a few of them that can help you if you're stuck:
Tio [Try It Online]
Code Academy
Kahn Academy
Codingbat.com
Hackerrank.com
good old Stack Overflow
Geeks for Geeks
What's Up Each Week?
class pages
drop-down at the top of any/every web page. Since
there are two sections, there are two 'dates' columns so you should pick the column that applies
to your section. Here is a top-level list of topics by week:
Week # Section 01
Dates
Section 02
Dates Theme
Topic
01 Aug 31 & Sept 02
Sept 01 & Sept 03 Introduction
Introduction to CSO and CMSI 2210
02 Sept 07 & Sept 09
Sept 08 & Sept 10 Basics of Computer Systems
03 Sept 14 & Sept 16
Sept 15 & Sept 17 Representing Information
Number Encoding & Functions
04 Sept 21 & Sept 23
Sept 22 & Sept 24 Character Encoding & Strings
05 Sept 27 & Sept 29
Sept 28 & Sept 30
Computer Logic Gates:
Inside the CPU
Building Blocks & Combinations
06 Oct 05 & Oct 07
Oct 06 & Oct 08
Basic Processor Architecture ~ Stanley Penguin
07 Oct 12 & Oct 14
Oct 13 & Oct 15 The REAL Assembly Languages
08 Oct 19 & Oct 21
Oct 20 & Oct 22 Intel X86 vs ARM vs Apple Silicon vs NVidea
09 Oct 26 & Oct 28
Oct 27 & Oct 29 Status Register & Assembly Coding Stds
10 Nov 02 & Nov 04
Nov 03 & Nov 05 The C
Language
C
Language Fundamentals Part One
11 Nov 09 & Nov 11
Nov 10 & Nov 12 C
Language Fundamentals Part Two
12 Nov 16 & Nov 18
Nov 17 & Nov 19 Calling Conventions
13 Nov 23 & Nov 25
Nov 24 & Nov 26 Debugging Assembly Code
GDB
and LLDB
14 Nov 30 & Dec 02
Dec 01 & Dec 03 Computing in the Large
Introduction to Networking
15 Dec 07 & Dec 09
Dec 08 & Dec 10 Wrapping It Up
Final Exam Preparations
16 Dec 13 — Dec 15
Dec 14 — Dec 18 Finals
No Class for Final Exams!
Upcoming Deadlines
Read
In
the Beginning Was The Command Line
parts 1 – 5 [17 pages]
and read
about its author Neal
Stephenson, the science fiction author
all over the map
on my computer or printer. USE SPACES INSTEAD.
You can set up almost every modern text editor to insert spaces whenever you press the TAB
key, or you can simply pound the spacebar.
in-class exercises
which serve to reinforce
the week's concepts as presented in class. THESE EXERCISES ARE NOT INCLUDED
IN YOUR GRADE, and are done in your groups. If you want to keep them, you can check them in
to your classwork folders in your GitHub group repository. They are only used as an indication
of your progress and understanding. Also, having access to your repository helps ME to help YOU!
You can also commit code that is in process
with which you need my help, or which isn't
working or completed.
Exams, Quizzes, and Projects
closed everything
. The final exam will be
open everything
except neighbor, because this is hard stuff. All of this —
the quizzes and the exam — is individual work; NO GROUPS!
Course Topics Detailed
What You'll Need for Success
Two Tips for Success
learned
. RECALL is the most effective way to load your long-term memory. Please
work through Nicky Case's interactive essay How to
remember everything forever-ish. [Also,
this article
backs up the importance of recall.]
In a nutshell, here's what you should promise *YOURSELF* to do to be successful:
In return, *I* promise you that I will:
Instructional Methods
Lectures and Course Content
in-class exercise
like a lab.
All submitted work will be maintained using a GitHub repository.
Use of GitHub and all other tools required for the course will be explained during class
sessions, with the exception of the nuances of your 'code-editor-of-choice'. However, it will
be up to the student to handle any and all installation on their respective computer. Of course,
if you need help, it will be available, and I'll do my best to help you get things working! If
I don't know the answer I'll help you find someone who does.
In-class Exercises
I do, we do, you do
— meaning I will show
some code in class [possibly writing it from scratch], then will work with you to change it some
way, coding together, then I'll turn you loose to do more on your own in your teams. Most of the
semester will be structured by introducing topics in the first session of the week, followed by
in-class experience with coding in the second session of the week.
Textbooks and Resources
written
information for the course will come from these web pages
and from the recorded videos and shared diagrams that will be done during class sessions. In
addition, here are some very useful and informative links to related material, which you will
need to read and work with during the course:
trial and error
with this course, and you
will be doing quite a bit of Internet searching for the information you will need. It can be
a great deal of fun, since this is a bit like the scientific method of investigation!
Grading
Percent Letter Earned Achievement
90 - 100% A- / A Professional quality work; outstanding
80 - 90% B- / B / B+ Entry-level quality work; above average, shows extra effort and interest
70 - 80% C- / C / C+ Satisfactory work; expected with reasonable effort
60 - 70% D Substandard work; minimal effort shown
59 or less F Thank you for playing; see you next semester
Evaluation Item Weight
Homework [total, all 6]
homework01: 05%
homework02: 05%
homework03: 05%
homework04: 05%
homework05: 10%
homework06: 10%40%
Quiz #1 10%
Quiz #2 10%
Quiz #3 10%
Quiz #4 10%
Final Exam [cumulative] 15%
Class Participation 05%
Class Participation Criteria [Each Class Meeting] Value
Absent *without* prior notification/agreement of professor
0 pts
Absent *with* prior notification/agreement of professor OR
5 pts
Present in class, and hopefully:
Demonstrates excellent preparation from readings and other material.
Offers analysis, synthesis, and evaluation; puts together pieces of the
discussion to develop new approaches that take the class further.
Also, has in-class code checked in to proper classwork folder for the week.
Further, let me re-state that code that does not compile will be
not be evaluated and you will have to do it over to get any credit for the
assignment.
well let me prove it works
office hour sessions. Forewarned
is forearmed, as the saying goes.
In this class, documentation which is not of professional quality is
no longer acceptable. Spelling, grammar, and
internal document consistency all count and will cost you big-time
if not correct! I will not hesitate to knock off a full letter grade on an
otherwise perfectly correct assignment if there are egregious and/or numerous
spelling/grammar errors. In addition, coding style will play a large part in
determining the grade on the code for the homework. It is the job of each student
to properly structure, comment, and indent, to select the proper names for
variables, and to not
hard-code
values. NO MAGIC NUMBERS!
Additional Information
as
assembler and the ld
linker are installed. Those are usually shipped with
the Mac O/S so there should be no problem. You can also use the Apple clang
compiler which will
handle a lot of the 'dirty work' for you in terms of compiling, assembling and linking.
C
compiler won't recognize. Several possible free tools are
available, such as the following:
vi
or VIM
editor,
but it takes some getting used to and is rather an acquired taste
.
BRING UP A
'REAL' COMMAND LINE TERMINAL WINDOW
and perform the tasks in that. If it works there,
whatever problem you're having with VSCode is a VSCode configuration problem.
in-class exercises
every week,
to give you experience with the concepts for that week.
General Statement
Academic Honesty Policy
found at:
academics.lmu.edu/honesty/.
LMU Honor Code and Process
found at:
this link.
Unauthorized Access to or Alteration of Privileged and Proprietary Information:
unauthorized use
and, therefore, prohibited
Generative AI and Your Learning
A's
:
available for download at:
[Community
Standards document]
Disruptive behavior which is persistent or significantly interferes with
classroom activities may be subject to disciplinary action. A student may be referred to
the Office of Student Judicial Affairs if their behavior constitutes a violation of the
conduct code.
Please turn off and put out of sight all electronic devices (other than those and when allowed) during
class-time. The interruptions and/or distractions they cause disrupt class and interfere with the
learning process. Even if you are not on video, it's distracting to you.
safe area
is the sunken gardens. There will be people
to guide you.
lion.lmu.edu
email address, which is known as your address of record. I get this list
from BrightSpace, so that's what I use.