DSCI 521 Milestone 1

Set up your folder structure

See the assessment table on the home page for the weight, due date, and where to submit.

What you are doing

You are building one project across this course, and it will live in a repository you create in Milestone 2.

This milestone is a practice run for that. You set up a folder structure here, practise the terminal commands once, and find out now if something on your machine is not working. That way, when you start the real project repository next week, your tools are already sorted out.

There is no code in this milestone, just some practice with terminal commands.

By the end of this milestone you will have:

A folder structure you made from the terminal.
A README.md that introduces you.
Screenshots of your terminal, showing how you did it.

Nothing needs to look good yet. The point is to get the pieces in place.

Everything here comes from the Week 1 lecture. Each step below links to the part of the textbook that covers it.

Lecture 1: Introduction to MDS software and Bash

Read this before you open your terminal

Do all of the terminal work below in one terminal window, and keep it open until you finish the milestone. Do not close it and reopen it partway through.

At the end, you will take screenshots of that terminal window. We look at two things in those screenshots:

The commands you ran.
The output those commands produced.

That is why the window has to stay open. If you close it, you lose the output, and history on its own will not be enough.

You do not need to clean anything up

Your terminal will be messy, and that is fine. We are not grading it for neatness.

Typos do not count against you.
Extra commands do not count against you.
Starting a step over does not count against you.
Commands that failed do not count against you.

Do not retype your session to make it look tidy. We would rather see what actually happened.

The one thing to check before you screenshot: make sure there is no password, token, or other private information visible in the window. If there is, crop it out or cover it.

Step 1: Make the folder structure

Textbook:

Make these folders with the mkdir command in your terminal.

Do not use Finder, Windows File Explorer, a “New Folder” button, or the file panel in your editor. Being able to do this from the command line is the point of the step, so that is what we are looking for.

Create a folder structure for 521. Use mkdir to create your folder for mds materials (e.g. mds) and a folder inside it for our course (e.g. 521). If they already exist, use cd to navigate to them. Inside of your 521 folder, make a milestone 1 folder named DSCI_521-milestone_1. Use cd to open it.
From the top level of your milestone 1 folder, use mkdir to create these three folders:
```
data
documents
screenshots
```
Run ls to list the folder you are in, and confirm that all three are there.

Do not skip the ls. Your terminal screenshot in Step 3 needs to show both the mkdir commands and the ls output. If the folders show up with no mkdir behind them, this step is not complete.

Two things to keep in mind:

Folder names are case sensitive. Use the exact names above.
data and documents stay empty this week. They will exist on your own computer, and ls will show them. That is expected, and it is not something you need to fix. You are practising skills in this assignment. We will build on these skills in later assignments.

Step 2: Write your README

Textbook:

Create README.md at the top level of your milestone 1 folder (e.g. code README.md if you have VS Code installed, positron README.md if you prefer Positron) and add:

A title line with the course and milestone.
Your name.
A short paragraph introducing yourself. Three or four sentences is plenty. Say where you came from, what you studied or worked on before MDS, and what you are hoping to get out of the program.
One or two sentences saying what is in this milestone.

Write this for a stranger who reads your README and wonders who you are. You will reuse this paragraph on your website in Milestone 2, so it is worth a few minutes now.

Step 3: Screenshot your terminal work

Textbook: Seeing the history of commands

Scroll up through the window and take screenshots of your commands and their output, from your first mkdir onward (i.e., only the relevent commands for this assignment). Take as many as you need to cover the whole session. Name them terminal-1.png, terminal-2.png, and so on.
Then run:
```
history
```
Take a screenshot of that output too, and name it history.png. If the list is too long for one screen, use history-1.png, history-2.png, and so on. 3b. You need a screenshot of README.md in your editor as well.
Save all of these screenshots in the screenshots folder you made in Step 1.

Remember from earlier: mess is fine, private information is not.

Step 4: Submit

Submit you screenshots (one for README.md, all for the terminal and history) on Gradescope.

Before you submit, check

README.md has your name and your introduction paragraph.
You made the folders with mkdir, not with Finder or File Explorer, and your screenshot shows those commands.
On your computer, ls shows data, documents, and screenshots.
On your computer, ls data and ls documents both list nothing, because those folders are still empty.
screenshots holds your terminal screenshots and your history screenshot (and possibly your README.md screenshot).
The terminal screenshots show your commands and their output.
No passwords or private information are visible in any screenshot.
Your screenshots for terminal commands, history, and README.md are uploaded on Gradescope.

Grading

Item	Marks
README.md with your introduction paragraph	5
Folders made with `mkdir`, with the `ls` output to confirm	5
Terminal screenshots showing commands and output	5
History screenshot	4
Total	19

If you get stuck

Textbook: Asking Effective Questions

Ask in the 521_platforms-dsci Slack channel or come to office hours. Post the command you ran and the error message you got, not just “it did not work”.