For projects, we will be using the Unix instructional machines sanjuan & orcas, both new Digital Alpha workstations, and wolf, grizzly, & lynx, old DEC MIPS machines that will be retiring after this quarter. You'll access thes machines using the X-terminals in 329. To do the projects, you will at least need to know the minimum set of commands necessary to be able to edit, compile, run, and probably debug your programs. However, later advanced CS courses will very likely be using Unix, so it will be good to get comfortable using the system.
The good news (depending on your attitude) is that you will need to know little Unix to complete this course. The bad news is that familiarizing yourself with Unix will be mostly your responsibility. No lecture or tutorial can be comprehensive, and is not as effective as trying things on your own. Because of this, I've tried to compile some resources for your reference. There's probably much more on the web if you look hard enough. Of course, the best way to learn is to ask someone (classmates, TAs, etc.) who knows.
Emacs is a powerful editor that does everything and more. It's complexity, however, brought about editors like pico, which looks and acts like a stripped-down (this is a big understatement) Emacs.One nice feature of Emacs that you might like is C++-mode, which when enabled causes emacs to appropriately indent C++ code as you write it. This mode should automatically be enabled when you edit a .C or .cc file. If you edit a .h file, you will need to enable it manually (since Emacs will be in C-mode. To do this, type Esc x c++-mode,
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