Announcements

Week 5

2020-10-09

Hello everyone,

Hope you all enjoyed the resume and LinkedIn workshops! Wishing you guys luck in job hunting. Here's this week's announcements:

Homework 3ABC
- We've extended the deadline for all parts of Homework 3 to tonight due to some misunderstandings. If you have not completed any part of these assignments, please do so by tonight.
Project Checkpoint Details
- We've decided to release details for the checkpoint Tuesday. This is to make sure you guys have time to form pairs so make sure to have a partner by then if you're looking for one!
- The first checkpoint will not be coding-intense but will instead require you to demonstrate your understanding of the skeleton code.
Project Partners
- We'll be releasing two forms tomorrow: one for those who have a partner and another for those that are looking for one. They will both be due Monday night. Partners will be announced Tuesday.
AWS Educate
- We've extended the deadline for registering to Tuesday. Get this done as soon as possible in case you run into logistical issues. This will be our last extension for signing up.

As always, make sure to take care of yourselves.

Warmly,

Your DeCal Course Staff

Week 4

2020-09-26

Hey everyone!

Midterm season is in full swing, so hope you all are keeping busy. We also hope you enjoyed the Docker lecture! There is a lot of fun to be had there (as we build up to the project). That said, we have some very important announcements this week so please read carefully:

Good job on getting through Docker! The main things you should have taken away were the pros and cons of VM's and Containers. You are not expected to know anything from the demo (yet).
Homework 3 will be officially released Tuesday (9/29) and due Thursday (10/8), so 1.5 weeks total. This means that you will have a little over a week to complete it. It will consist of 3 parts (hence the extra time):

Homework 3a - Golang Coding
- This is the hands-on autograded coding assignment.
  - We're still getting local tests and the autograder ready but feel free to get started using the starter code: https://github.com/BearCloud/proj0
  - The estimated time to complete this is 2-4 hours so we highly recommend at least looking at the starter code sometime this weekend.
  - If you end up nearing the 3 hour mark for completing this project, come to office hours so we can help you walk through the code conceptually and help you debug!
- Homework 3b - SQL
  - This will be a Gradescope assignment regarding SQL. Do not panic, we will be covering this on Tuesday, so you will have a fundamental understanding by the time the homework is assigned.
  - We're still deciding if it will be fill in the blank or autograded. Sit tight.
  - The estimated time for this homework will be 30mins - 1 hour.
- Homework 3c - Feedback Form
  - We will be releasing a feedback form shortly to collect your thoughts and concerns regarding the previous week.
  - The estimated time for this portion is 5 minutes.
- This is a lot of homework, but we're assigning everything ahead of time in order to give you about a week and a half to complete it. If you feel like the amount of homework is overloading you, please come to office hours or make a private Piazza post! We're more than happy to accomodate and give you slip days in case you're overloaded with other classes or have interviews coming up. That being said, do not procrastinate on this homework. This class is beginning to ramp up (to an actual 3 unit workload) so please make sure to start early on this assignment.

AWS Accounts - You should have received an email regardings signups for AWS Educate. Please fill this out asap. Some students have already encountered issues so we'd like to sort them out as soon as possible.
Attendance (Enrolled students only) - We will be running a script this weekend to determine everyone's attendance so far. If you haven't filled out the accomodation form by now and/or have started using your three (3) unexcused absences, you will get an email sometime before Tuesday with your current attendance status.
Resources - We will be updated our resources thread to include tutorials and walkthroughs for Docker shortly, in case you'd like to know more or are feeling iffy on the subject.

With all this said, we hope you guys are making the best of this remote semester and are making sure to take care of yourselves. We're always here for you if you stumble, so don't hesitate to reach out. Good luck on your midterms!

Warmly,

Your DeCal Course Staff

Week 3

2020-09-19

Hey everyone,

Hope all have had a good week and are going strong in your classes. We've got a few announcements for this coming week:

We know that last Thursday's lecture on Golang was difficult, so we'll spend the first 15-20 minutes of Tuesday's lecture reviewing Golang and web server programming. Please bring any and all questions to that lecture because we will be moving on. Here's some resources to review what we covered: golang | http. You do not have to read their full contents in order to understand the material, but it will be good practice to skim them and get the gist. One of the things we will emphasize in this class is quickly skimming documentation/tutorials.
Homework 2 will be released later today (9/19) and will be due Thursday (9/24) at 11:59pm. It will consist of two components: a mandatory feedback form and a Golang + Web Server homework assignment.
Feedback form: We will release a feedback form link which will give you a unique token at the end. Submit this token to Gradescope for credit. (est time: 5 mins)
Golang: We will send out a Gradescope assignment that covers the basic syntax of Golang and web requests. This is not a coding assignment. (est time: 30 mins)
Office Hours: We will send out a post later today detailing our office hours availability.

Lastly, if you feel overwhelmed by the pacing of this course, please reach out to us so we can figure out ways to help you get up to speed. We want everyone to get as much as possible out of this course and are willing to work with you. Take care and stay safe.

Warmly,

Your DeCal Course Staff

Week 2

2020-09-11

Hey everyone,

Hope you guys enjoyed the introduction to Networking Protocols and Golang. We'll be going into more depth and hands-on usage of HTTP and Golang beginning next week Thursday. Here's a few announcements for you guys:

Homework 1 has been released and can be accessed via Gradescope. It is due by end of day Tuesday. Auditors, we'll be putting it on the website later today under the "Assignments" column.
We will have our first guest speaker on Tuesday. It will be half-tech talk and half-Q&A, so please come up with one or two questions to ask him! Also, in order to be respectful of the speaker's time, please make sure to arrive before Berkeley time because we will be starting at 7:10 sharp.
We're assigning some highly recommended readings/tutorials covering everything we've covered so far. This is optional, but if you feel iffy on any of these subjects, it will be helpful to at least skim them because we're assuming you're moderately familiar with all of these moving forward.

Command Line
- Here's a useful cheatsheet in addition to the one on our class website
Git
- General
  - Read "Git Handbook" from https://try.github.io/ for a high level understanding of Git
  - Here's a cheatsheet to keep handy in addition to the one on our class website
  - https://learngitbranching.js.org/ to reinforce your knowledge of branching
  - Create a Github account here if you don't already have one
- Networking
  - TCP/IP: https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/ddos/glossary/tcp-ip/
  - HTTP: https://www.codecademy.com/articles/http-requests
- Golang
  - We absolutely recommend completing A Tour of Go up until and including Maps
    - If you are strapped for time, prioritize learning Go
  - Installation
    - https://golang.org/doc/install
    - Make a Piazza post if you run into issues

Week 1

2020-09-05

Thanks for sticking through the first week! We have a few logistical announcements for you guys:

All enrollment codes have been sent out. If you received your enrollment code, add the course on Calcentral by Monday, September 7, because that is when we will be pulling our official roster to Gradescope and also when we will be assigning the first homework assignment. If you did not receive an enrollment code, make a private Piazza post immediately.
We'd like to do everything we can to help make this class a better experience for you, so please fill out the optional anonymous check-in for week 1 (link is on Piazza). It would really help us gauge where we (the instructors) are and allow us to better deliver the course content, especially because this is the first iteration of the DeCal.
Because we reopened our application while the first few lectures were running, we have waived the attendance requirement for this past week only. We very highly recommend watching at least Thursday's lecture because you will be responsible for knowing it when we begin teaching Golang and SQL.
If you felt a bit overwhelmed during our Command Line and Git lecture, don't sweat! We will be compiling all the commands we used in the lecture into a document with a breakdown of how commands work as well as how to take our conceptual knowledge of Git and apply our hands-on knowledge. The commands will be there for reference so you don't need to memorize it, but you'll soon have them down through muscle memory.

Infosession

2020-08-28

Thank you to those that came out to the infosession! A lot of points were brought that we're addressing here.

Link to the infosession slides is here
Auditors will be allowed to all of the class resources including the piazza. However, only enrolled students will have access to BCourses and the autograder. In order to compensate for this, we will send out local tests for both enrolled and auditing students.
All students intending to audit must submit this form in order to gain access to course content here.
Confirmation email links have been sent out to all those that applied. If you applied and did not receive an email, please email the course staff at "cloudcomputingdecal@gmail.com"
Applications are due this Sunday, August 30th at 11:59pm PST. Enrollment codes will be sent out this Monday (August 31st) and the first lecture will take place over Zoom this Tuesday (September 1st)
Accomodation form will be sent out after enrollment codes are distributed.

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