Primary educational objective is to learn programming with C++. When successfully attended the course, students have a good command of the mechanisms to construct a program. They know the fundamental control and data structures and understand how an algorithmic problem is mapped to a computer program. They have an idea of what happens "behind the scenes" when a program is translated and executed. Secondary goals are an algorithmic computational thinking, understanding the possibilities and limits of programming and to impart the way of thinking of a computer scientist.

The course covers fundamental data types, expressions and statements, (Limits of) computer arithmetic, control statements, functions, arrays, structural types and pointers. The part on object orientation deals with classes, inheritance and polymorphism, simple dynamic data types are introduced as examples. In general, the concepts provided in the course are motivated and illustrated with algorithms and applications.

This is a plan. No plan survives contact with reality. Regularly check the agenda for changes.

Independent of the information published here, a new set of exercises is released every Thursday morning on CodeExpert.

Time and place

The following exercise sessions are offered:

Assistants marked with EN and FR teach in English and French, respectively, all others in German.

Backoffice assistants

• Consider asking general questions regarding lecture content, exercises or bonus projects in the Moodle forums: such questions are typically of broader interest than you might think
• Specific questions regarding your solution attempts, e.g. for exercises and bonus projects, are best directed to your teaching assistant
• For administrative questions you can contact our head TA Linard Arquint

Open C++ Tutorial To facilitate the introduction to the lecture, especially for beginners in programming, we will provide an introductory tutorial, which can be completed autonomously. We strongly recommend to complete it in the first week of the semester. The tutorial is available in both German and English. You can switch the language any time.

Books

• Bjarne Stroustrup: Einführung in die Programmierung mit C++, Pearson Studium, 2010.
  Available online from the ETH Domain.
• Stephen Prata, C++ Primer Plus, Sixth Edition, Addison Wesley, 2012
• Andrew Koenig and Barbara E. Moo: Accelerated C++, Addison-Wesley, 2000

Script

Prof. Dr. Bernd Gärtner and Dr. Michael Hoffmann kindly provided a script (lecture notes) that covers most of the material presented in the lecture. It contains additional details, but is unfortunately no longer maintained, and thus partly outdated.

Other Useful Resources

• C++ Stylesheet
• C++ Reference
• C++ Standard

Code Expert Exam Environment

The Code Expert exam environment is configured slightly differently than the exercise environment. Main differences: more permissive (e.g. warnings instead of errors, vector[i] is allowed), and in larger tasks, you can run tests individually. If you are interested, try the Code Expert exam environment now.

Old Exams

You can find many old exams in our exam collection. Word of caution:

• We strongly recommend that you solve exercises first, before looking at their solutions
• Be aware that course content and presentation change over time, as do exercise types and exam formats