Assignment 1 - Getting set up

In this course, assignments are git repositories provided through github. This assigment is mostly designed to familiarize you with the process of downloading and completing assignments.

You should have already signed up for a github account. If not, go back and follow the instructions here.

To Do: Accept the assignment

Step 1: Accept Assignment01 at this link

When you accept the assignment, a git repository is created in your github account.

Step 2: Click the link shown on the webpage.

accept assignment

This repository contains a lot more stuff than the repository you made before, but it's still simply a directory with subdirectories and files (plus git superpowers of course). You can click on the directories and files to see their contents.

Of course, this repository is stored on github, not your computer. We can fix that by cloneing^[1] this repository to your computer.

To Do: Clone the repo

Step 3a: Find the repository url on the github page:

clone repo

Step 3b: Copy the url listed, and then in your terminal,

$ git clone <url>
remote: Enumerating objects: 18, done.
remote: Counting objects: 100% (18/18), done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (14/14), done.
remote: Total 18 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0), pack-reused 0
Unpacking objects: 100% (18/18), done.

You should now have a new directory called Assignment01-<your_username>/.

To Do

Step 4: First, change your working directory to Assignment01-<your_username>/, (you remember how to do this right?).

Then do git status

Assignment01 $ git status

On branch master
Your branch is up to date with 'origin/master'.

nothing to commit, working tree clean

You now have a local copy of the "remote"^[2] repository. By default, the name of this remote is origin.

Note

In principal, it is possible to have many remotes and many local copies, but in practice, you'll usually only have one of each. See the url of origin:

Assignment01 $ git remote get-url origin

https://github.com/wellesley-bisc195/Assignment01-<your_username>

There are many other useful options for git remote. Take a look by executing git remote --help.

Explore the assignment with the command line

The Assignment01 repository has a directory called src/ (for "source code") that contains some files ending in .jl. These files contain some julia code.

Let's take a look at these files using the terminal:

Assignment01 $ ls src

Assignment01.jl		run.jl			some_variables.jl
assignment.jl		some_functions.jl

The cat command prints the contents of a file or files to the screen:

Assignment01 $ cat src/some_functions.jl

function say_name(name)
    println("Hi there, $(name)!")
end

function say_age(age)
    println("You are $age years old.")
end

To Do

Explore this directory from your terminal using ls and cat. Don't change the working directory, or if you do, make sure you know how to return.

When you're finished, you should be able to execute pwd and see a path that ends with Assignment01-<your-username>

Explore the assignment with VS code

This assignment is just a directory with text files, some of which contain code.

VS Code, which you should already have installed (if you don't, click here), is designed to explore exactly this kind of project.

To Do: open the assignment in VS Code

Open the VS Code app, then click File -> Open, and open the Assignment01 directory.

You'll see the folder structure on the left, and you can click on individual files to open and edit them.

This is one of the primary ways you will interact with your code in this course, so get comfortable!

Run the code

You can run this code in your terminal:

To Do

Assignment01 $ julia src/run.jl

Hi there, Kevin!
You are 36 years old.

I'm guessing the output of this program is incorrect - at least for you.

To Do

Step 5: Edit the files.

Open up src/some_variables.jl in VS code and change the values "Kevin" and 36 to be more appropriate. Be sure to save the file, then execute julia src/run.jl again.

The output of the program should say your name and your age, rather than mine.

To Do

Step 6: Commit the changes.

Once you have it working, go ahead and commit the changes. Be sure to use an informative commit message.

Check out your commit history to see the changes you've made:

Assignment01 $ git log --pretty=oneline | head

372e3269256dbce109e4dc0b832e5ce95fca82bd remove old stuff from README
126a20c75f8a4b19bef85edde9a30dc68f4ec20c add assignment files
c4a1404ff3fa3aed01936dd474e144694b07efdb Files generated by PkgTemplates
55dcf2bd2ddae163fbd657273cb3b0ec836e2386 Initial commit

You'll see something different, of course, but at the top you should see you recent commits, including the commit messages you wrote.

So far, this might seem like something that could have been handled with google docs. You only had to change a single file. Let's try something a little more complicated.

If you open the files in VS Code, you might notice that there are a bunch of connections between the files. For example, in some_functions.jl, I've defined the say_name() and say_age() functions, then in run.jl, one of the first lines is include("some_functions.jl"), and in the main() function, you can see say_name(n) and say_age(a).

This is not an accident.

ToDo

Step 7: Change the line function say_name(name) in some_functions.jl to function say_the_name(name), save the file, then try to run julia src/run.jl again. What happens?

You should get an UndefinedVarError, since run.jl is trying to call something called say_name, but this doesn't exist anymore.

Tip

Seeing error messages when you try to run code is a very normal part of programming, and not just when you're learning. A lot of the error message might seem like gobbledygook, but it's worth paying attention. Learning to find the useful information in an error message is incredibly useful when trying to debug your code.

Like most of coding, this takes lots of practice, but here are some places to start:

Can you find the name of the error?
Are their parts of the message in plain english? Those parts are usually quite helpful.
Can you find line numbers/file names pointing to where the problem might be?

OK, changing to say_the_name is maybe not worth it. But you've now changed a bunch of things - how do you get back to a working version?

In this silly little case, perhaps it's not so hard, but in real-life coding, one often needs to make many changes to many different files. Git makes this easy.

Assuming you haven't made any new commits since you had a working program, just do

Assignment01 $ git reset --hard HEAD

HEAD is short-hand for the last commit on this branch. The --hard flag undoes any changes. We'll talk about more complicated uses of git reset later.

Note

If you did make commits in the mean time, no problem. Use the git log command from above to see your recent commits, then copy the commit hash (the weird sequence of characters on the left) and use that instead of HEAD in the git reset command.

Practice

The variables a and n in some_variables.jl aren't very informative. It's usually a good idea to have variable and function names be "self documenting", that is have the name tell you something about what they're for.

Practice

Change these variables to my_age and my_name respectively, then fix run.jl so that it uses these new variables.

Be sure to save the files and commit your changes when everything is working again (you can also commit intermediate steps).

Complete the assignment

The src directory in the Assignment01 repo contains a code file called assignment.jl.

Open this file in VS Code and follow the instructions in the comments.

Tip

In julia, comment lines start with #, and this allows us to write plain english inside code files.

These lines are skipped by the julia parser entirely, even if they contain valid code.

The formatting of the comments might look a little weird, it allows me to generate a rendered version from the code that's a bit easier too look at

Then use git add and git commit to commit these changes to the repository. You do not have to wait until you're finished to commit changes - There are many different philosophies about what amount of work should be included in a commit, but my philosophy is "commit early, commit often."

Tip

For files that are already being tracked, you can skip the two-step add and commit. Instead, you can do git commit -a -m "commit message" - the -a (or --all) flag automatically adds all previously tracked files.

Once you've made and committed the requested changes, it's time to push^[3] those commits back to the remote. When you cloned this repo, git automatically set the remote tracking branch, so you can just do

$ git push

Enumerating objects: 7, done.
Counting objects: 100% (7/7), done.
Delta compression using up to 12 threads
Compressing objects: 100% (4/4), done.
Writing objects: 100% (4/4), 409 bytes | 409.00 KiB/s, done.
Total 4 (delta 2), reused 0 (delta 0)
remote: Resolving deltas: 100% (2/2), completed with 2 local objects.
To https://github.com/wellesley-bisc195/lesson-2-bisc195tester
   be920ca..0da312f  master -> master

Good work!

Key Terms

[1]	`clone` - A copy of a repository in a different location. Clones can be linked to enable easy syncing of commits.

[2]	`remote` - A clone of a repository that exists on a server, rather than your local machine. You can see what remotes are linked to your local repo with `git remote`.

[3]	`push` - Move commits from a local repo to the remote.

Assignment01 code

For each assignment, the contents of the assignment code script will be rendered as html at the bottom of the assignment description page. If you're interested in how that works, check out Literate.jl

Instructions for Assignment01

Introduction

In this assignment, you will learn how to use github classroom to download, complete, and test your assignments. Make sure you have followed the instructions to set up your account and join the classroom.

Question 1

Did you complete the instructions for modifying some_variables.jl and some_functions.jl? You should have changed the variables n and a to my_name and my_age respectively, and you should be able to execute julia src/run.jl without errors. Once you can, type yes between the quotations below

Note: this syntax (question1 = "yes") is called "variable assignment," and we'll learn more about this in the next lesson.

question1 = ""

Question 2

What is the shell command to list the contents of the working directory, including hidden files?

Enter the command between the quotes below.

question2 = ""

Question 3

What is a shell command to create a new directory called "q3" in your current working directory?

Enter the command between the quotes below.

question3 = ""

Question 4

If you haven't already, take a look at the syllabus. Which of the following is closest to the course policy on collaborating / sharing code?

I shouldn't discuss anything about the course with other students
I can freely discuss the non-assignment parts of the course, but shouldn't talk about assignments with other students.
I can freely discuss all aspects of the course, but shouldn't share my assignment code or look at someone else's assignment code.
I can freely discuss all aspects of the course, and freely share all of my code - open source!

Replace the 0 below with the correct number

question4 = 0

Question 5

What fraction of the course grade is based on completing assignments like this one? Express the answer as a number between 0 and 1

question5 = 0.0

Wellesley College - BISC189 Essential Skills for Computational Biology