There are several places for students to go for help.

1. Ask questions in class. If you are stuck on a particular subject, the odds are very high that a significant portion of the class is also having trouble with this subject. Be brave and ask questions in class. Your instructors will thank you.

2. Ask questions in your lab. One reason we have three hour labs is to give students a chance to ask their TA (or classmates) about problems they are having with class material. Having the computers available also means that you can point to the specific problem and get feedback.

3. Ask questions in office hours. The instructors and TAs schedule these hours specifically to answer your questions (and to get to know you). Our schedules are listed in the syllabus.

4. Read the text book and online resources, including the online notes and the list of frequently asked questions below. Since the field of computer programming changes rapidly, learning how to dig up answers is an important skill you will have to master.

Frequently Asked Questions

Question: What do I do if the EECS machine (or the C++ programming environment) is not working properly?

Answer: If you discover a problem during lab hours, notify your TA who will try to fix the problem. Otherwise, send email to "help@eecs.ku.edu" explaining which machine is acting up and what the symptoms of the problem are. Our staff currently maintains hundreds of computers, so polite and constructive emails are appreciated.

Question: How can I do my homework at home?

Answer: If you have a computer at home running Linux, then you will already have g++ compiler installed. If you have a PC running windows, you could use a install the g++ compiler for windows from cygwin, but I am not sure if they are on the same release as the Linux g++ compiler. If you use Microsoft Visual C++ or similar products, you will have to be VERY careful to use standard C++ and no vendor specific extensions, or you will not be able to port your code to g++ for electronic submission.

Question: Where can I get technical help when working at home?

Answer: Unfortunately, there are too many different machines, operating systems, and C++ compilers for the instructors and EECS staff to provide technical support for all of these products. Our suggestions are: 1) check out the vendor's web pages, 2) call the vendor's technical support line, 3) ask your classmates who are also working at home.

Question: When I check my grades online why are so many grades equal to -1?

Answer: We initialize all entries in the spreadsheet to -1 to indicate "no grade available". When grades have been entered (or the 24 hour window for late labs/programming projects has expired) we replace the -1's with the true grades. Please contact your instructor if your online grades have been incorrectly recorded.