New INFO I500 Sequence: Fundamentals of Informatics

Starting 2004-2005, this course will be reorganized into 3 courses:

I500A: General intro to computing history, organization and programming for all Informatics grads without strong computing background
I500S: Intro to computing concepts and tools for grads in Science Informatics tracks (bioinformatics, chemical informatics, ...)
I500H: Intro to computing concepts and tools for Informatics grads in Human-Computer Interaction Design

All entering Informatics grads will take a placement test, which will help the faculty evaluate each student's background and decide which I500 sequence courses the student should take, if any (see flow-chart).

I500A

The main concepts and tools covered tentatively include:

Intro to IT
Computing history
Intro to UNIX (Linux, Darwin/MacOSX, Solaris, BSD...)
UNIX shells, editors, process management, file system and utilities
Perl programming
System architecture
Computer hardware, software, and compilation (OAMulator, OAM, OAMPL)
Basic HTML, Internet and the Web

Books:

Irv Englander: The Architecture of Computer Hardware and Systems Software, 3rd Edition, Wiley (2003), ISBN: 0-471-07325-3
Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen, Jon Orwant: Programming Perl, 3rd Edition, O'Reilly and Associates (2000), ISBN: 0-596-00027-8
Also recommended:
- Randal Schwartz and Tom Phoenix: Learning Perl, 3rd Edition, O'Reilly and Associates (2001), ISBN: 0-596-00132-0 (a gentler intro to Perl)
- Jerry D. Peek, Grace Todino, John Strang: Learning the UNIX Operating System, 5th Edition, O'Reilly and Associates (2001), ISBN 0-596-00261-0

I500S

The main concepts and tools covered tentatively include:

Data structures, representation, and storage
Intro to algorithms and computational complexity
Database modeling, organization
Intro to SQL
Web/DB access
Intro to computer networks
Internet and the Web
CGI programming
Advanced Perl programming and modules (DBI, CGI, LWP,...)

Books (tentatively recommended):

James Tisdall: Mastering Perl for Bioinformatics, O'Reilly and Associates (2003), ISBN: 0-596-00307-2
Fred Rolland: The Essence of Databases, Prentice Hall PTR (1998), ISBN: 0-13-727827-6
Jon Orwant, Jarkko Hietaniemi, John Macdonald: Mastering Algorithms with Perl, O'Reilly and Associates (1999), ISBN: 1-56592-398-7

I500H

The main concepts and tools covered tentatively include:

Principles of HCI and the design cycle
Input checking and interface robustness
Rapid prototyping
Flash programming
Advanced HTML, XHTML, CSS
Intro to visualization
...?

Books: TBD