Welcome to this on-line course on computer programming within the context of the World Wide!The course is based on the belief that the Internet, Java, and the World Wide Web constitute a new environment for developing and using computer programs that is significantly different from the environments of earlier mainframe computers and more recent workstation and personal computers. During the course, you will learn two computer languages - Perl and Java - that are especially well-suited for programming in this context. But more importantly, you will learn how to work within the WWW, using HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) and CGI (Common Gateway Interface), and you will learn how to write programs in Java that can be delivered to and run on a Web browser through the network. This calls for a new way of thinking about programming and the relationship you, as programmer, have to those who use your programs as well as to other programmers with whom you may share code.
Course materials will be presented through the WWW. This includes a schedule of topics as well as course tutorials and resources that develop those topics. Your instructor will most likely lecture from those materials during class, but you may read them whenever you like - before and after class, in preparation for exams, or to help you with your programming projects.
You will also contribute to a course web. You will create a "homepage" for your course-related work. Then, as you do the various projects and assignments, you can add links from your coursepage to that work. That way, your instructor can access your work from any location and you and your colleagues may learn from one another.
A third major component of the course is a set of on-line tools. Included are several forums and a chatroom where you can exchange information with other students as well as your instructor and teaching assistant(s). A text search engine will index all course related material so that you can quickly and easily find information when you need it, no matter where in the course web it is located. Additional tools will be added as they become available and prove themselves useful.
So enjoy! This is an especially exciting time in the history of computing and you will be working at the forefront of one of its most important developments.