Missing Semester

This course will be hold by (alphabetical ordering, see below for emails!) Tobias Faller, Dr. Mathias Fleury, Florian Pollitt, and Tobias Seufert.

This course is oriented to the MIT/SAI “Missing Semester” and presents many useful tools. None of these tools requires a separate course, but each is useful, especially for manipulating text (e.g., log files, automating and evaluating experiments, …). A typical bachelor thesis will involve:

programming (with an IDE and a proper text editor setup)
analysing logs (for performance, statistics)
writing in LaTeX
producing plots

All these topics are covered in this lecture. More formally this course covers the following topics, among others:

Linux and desktop environment
text editors - Using Git - Shells and command line
Draw graphs in programs

The number of participants is limited (as we run the course for the first time) and HisInOne is taking care of it. We assume that master students already know most of the content, but they can attend too.

You can find a sanitized version of slides on our Nextcloud.

NEWS

Changes compared to previous iterations

We will not stream again (but will provide last year’s recording and a new recording for the parts that changed a lot).
The course is actually not meant for master students (who probably have already learned most of it anyway). Last year, it was still possible. This year it will not be (except if you failed the course).

Registration

For the registration we rely on HisInOne (including the selection process). We have been told that this time exercises and lecture would be synchronized, so only one registration is required. The registration dates are defined by the University, not by us (last year it was 25.09.2023 and will be similar this year, please see https://www.tf.uni-freiburg.de/de/studium-lehre/termine – we do not control the webpage and we do not know when it will be updated).

The course is (supposed to be) limited to 140 students (because we correct ourselves), but did not reach the limit during the WS24

Organization

Mode: lecture is in-person (with interaction), but also streamed and recorded with Zoom (without interaction)
Lecture & Exercise Class: To be confirmed (actual information: Wednesday 10 to 12 and Thursday 12 to 2pm)
Credits: 6 ECTS
Dependencies: none
Language: german
Responsible (for general questions): Dr. Mathias Fleury
Email (for everyone): To write everyone
Teaching by (alphabetical ordering, do not use this list to write people!): Tobias Faller, Mathias Fleury, Florian Pollitt, and Tobias Seufert.
Exercises will be done on the fly during the lecture depending on the subject.

Most communication is done through Ilias.

Why this course

The entire idea of this course is to show you tools and things that exist. In 2023 we got the feedback that many people would have like the course as a bachelor course! So come and watch it.

Grading

The course will be composed of two parts: the studienleistung (the weekly exercises) and the prüfungsleistung (a project at the end that will have to cover several themes, with a deadline two weeks after the end the course). More details will be given later (around christmas).

Project

The project will be fully announced later in the semester (probably as mentioned in the program, see below). You can have a look at the 2024 version, which will be similar to the 2024 version.

Temptative Planning (TODO: update for 2025)

This is still the 2024 version, we will probably move the LLM part earlier.

Week 1 to 5: Linux and Git (from the GUI down to the terminal)

Week	Lecture plan	Topics	Exercise available	Homework about that content
14. Oct	16. Oct., 10 AM to 12 PM	Introduction
		Light intro to markdown
		Github + TF account

	17. Oct., 12 PM to 02 PM	Ilias + Suchen + Einführung
21. Oct	23. Oct., 10 AM to 12 PM	Linux	at home	CRITICAL-EXERCISE
	24. Oct., 12 PM to 02 PM
28. Oct	30. Oct., 10 AM to 12 PM	Emacs+LSP	on Monday and Thursday	Not-All-Required (1/6)
04. Nov	06. Nov., 10 AM to 12 PM	Terminal (mit pipe)	during lecture	Not-All-Required (2/6)
	07. Nov., 12 PM to 02 PM	TF account for ssh / how much printing left / ..
11. Nov	13. Nov., 10 AM to 12 PM	Git (repositories, collaboration hooks, CI, …)	during lecture
	14. Nov., 12 PM to 02 PM	Git exercises		CRITICAL-EXERCISE (2weeks)
18. Nov	20. Nov., 10 AM to 12 PM	Git
	21. Nov., 12 PM to 02 PM	PDB

Week 6 to 11: Automation

Week	Lecture plan	Topics	Exercice available	Homework about that content
25. Nov	27. Nov., 10 AM to 12 PM	vim/helix + treesitter	during lecture	Not-All-Required (3/6)
	28. Nov., 12 PM to 02 PM	vim exercises
02. Dec	04. Dec., 10 AM to 12 PM	Python to extract data		CRITICAL-EXERCISE
	06. Dec., 12 PM to 02 PM	Exercise
09. Dec	11. Dec., 10 AM to 12 PM	VSCode (including plugins, remote)		Not-All-Required (4/6)
	12. Dec., 12 PM to 02 PM
16. Dec	18. Dec., 10 AM to 12 PM	Docker (requested topic)
	20. Dec., 12 PM to 02 PM
23. Dec	FREE (Christmas)
	FREE (Christmas)
30. Dec	FREE (New Years)
	FREE (New Years)
06. Jan	08. Jan., 10 AM to 12 PM	Plots (jupyper notebook)		CRITICAL-EXERCISE
	09. Jan., 12 PM to 02 PM	pyplot

Week 12 to 15: High level again

Week	Lecture plan	Topics	Exercice available	Homework about that content
13. Jan	15. Jan., 10 AM to 12 PM	LaTeX	during lecture	Not-All-Required (5/6)
	16. Jan., 12 PM to 02 PM	Project presentation?
19. Jan	21. Jan., 10 AM to 12 PM	LaTeX	during lecture
	22. Jan., 12 PM to 02 PM	LLMs?
27. Jan	29. Jan., 10 AM to 12 PM	LLMs (+define project here?)		CRITICAL-EXERCISE
	30. Jan., 12 PM to 02 PM
03. Feb	06. Feb., 10 AM to 12 PM	Feedback + project

The Lehrevaluation is the 6th not-all-required exercise and you must pass 4 of the 6 not-all-required exercises.