JavaCourse Resources
The following resources help support your success in CS 124.
Honors SectionHonors Section
CS 124 does not offer an Honors option in summer terms.
Course ForumCourse Forum
CS 124 runs a Discourse forum. The forum is the right place to ask questions, get help, and interact with other students and the course staff. Please use it for all course-related questions that are not of a sensitive nature, since answering them there helps other students with the same question.
Please also get in the habit of searching the forum before asking a question. Chances are fairly good that your question has already been asked and answered, which means that you can find out what you wanted to know immediately! On public forums this is also considered good forum etiquette.
Why not Piazza (or CampusWire, or some other crappy LMS)?Why not Piazza (or CampusWire, or some other crappy LMS)?
We are using the excellent open-source Discourse forum software to power our course forum. There are four main reasons that we consider Discourse a better choice:
- Discourse enables discussion. Piazza encourage students to converge to one answer. But in computer science, we frequently have multiple ways to solve a problem. Discourse helps us discuss the tradeoffs instead of pretending that there is one “right” answer.
- Discourse has a future. You will never again use Piazza once you graduate. (Unless you find yourself back at a univeristy.) However, you’ll frequently find yourself on Discourse forums as you continue your journey in technology.
- Discourse is good tech. Discourse is a modern, rapidly-evolving, responsive, and interactive forum application. Piazza… is not.
- Discourse is free and open source. We believe in both the power and the principles behind open source software. Discourse is a great example of what talented volunteers can do working together. And they have no incentive to monetize your personal data, like Piazza, Campuswire, and similar products. Our Discourse instance is hosted right here at Illinois and your data never leaves the premises.
If you want a full write-up, click here.
Activating Google LoginActivating Google Login
Enabling Google Apps integration is not required for students to participate in CS 124. However, course tutors may need to turn this on to access certain staff resources. And, if you’re a student and want to use Google services, this will allow you to access them from your University account.
The process is simple:
- Log in to the Illinois Cloud Dashboard
- Turn on Google Apps integration:
