Newbie, homework help, please.

[Michael Torrie]

On 04/21/2012 02:14 PM, someone wrote:
> Thanks for your reply Mr. Roy Smith. Also, thanks for the tip. Maybe
>  I did not make myself as clear or maybe you did not understand my 
> post. It states homework help, and I am doing this post to get help 
> before I pay somebody to show me how to do it, because, obviously our
> professor is not kind enough to show us how to do this less than two
> weeks before the due date with 3 projects (and now I have basically
> less than a week before it is due- and I am not waiting till the last
> minute)

I commend you for not waiting until the last minute.  And I'm glad you
are making progress with this assignment, with Bart's help.

I am curious though.  What class is this and how do you find yourself, a
non-programmer as you say, in this class?  When I was a student studying
CS, what you describe is typical for CS major classes.  IE the teacher
wasn't there to teach a language, rather he or she was there to teach
the theory and possible real-world application of the subject matter,
often algorithms, or database design.  In fact I had one class where the
text book had all its examples and exercises in one language (C), the
professor preferred and taught using examples from another langauge
(Object PASCAL), and I did all my projects in a third language, C++.
Poor TAs.  They had to be able to check of projects written in 3
different languages.  Now I hear the class is taught in Java.  Poor
souls. But I digress.

What is this class called?  What is the stated purpose of this class?