COMP 303 Software Development - Fall 2012

Basic Information

Description

Principles, mechanisms, techniques, and tools for software development. The course involves a significant project.

Sample Course Topics

Principles: Separation of concerns, encapsulation, substitutablity, interface segregation.
Mechanism: Exception-handling, serialization support, concurrency and synchronization, reflection.
Techniques: Design patterns, design by contract, unit testing, refactoring.
Tools: Integrated software development environment, automatic testing tools, coverage analyzers, static checkers.

Learning Outcomes

The learning outcomes for this course are organized along the four main conceptual axes of the course: principles, mechanisms, techniques, and tools. The following table lists the expected learning outcomes for the course (the table reads by row, from left to right).

After this course, you should be able to...

For a concrete look at what you should be able to do in this ourse, have a look at the best projects from 2006, 2007, and 2008, 2009, and 2010.

Reference Material

Required Textbook: Horstmann, Cay. Object-Oriented Design and Patterns, 2nd Edition. Wiley, 2005. Available at the Paragraphe Bookstore.

Evaluation

Important Notes:

1. Writing the midterm exam is optional. For students who do not write the midterm, the weight of the final will be 65%. For students who write the midterm, the respective weights of the midterm/final will be either 25%/40% or 0%/65%, whathever produces the highest final grade.
2. A mark of 50% or more for the project is required to pass the course, irrespective of the total final mark.
3. The project will be completed in groups of 4. 50% of the total project grade will be allocated equally to all team members, and 50% of the grade will be adjusted based on each member's contributions, as reported in a project group report submitted with each milestone. However, each team member must make contributions to all milestones. Teams should report any student who does not contribute anything to a milestone. Students who do not contribute to a milestone receive the grade of 0 for the milestone.
4. It will be possible to obtain bonus marks worth up to 5% of the maximum total grade through voluntary participation in class activities. Details will be provided in class.

The following material is subject to evaluation:

Anything presented in class, all material in the mandatory reading, operational knowledge of the tools covered in the course, anything completed to meet the learning objectives of the project. The midterm will cover all lectures up to and including the lecture immediately before it. The final will cover everything.

Official Academic Integrity Statement McGill University values academic integrity. Therefore all students must understand the meaning and consequences of cheating, plagiarism and other academic offenses under the Code of Student Conduct and Disciplinary Procedures (see www.mcgill.ca/students/srr for more information). Note that we reserve the right to run plagiarism detection software on all software submitted as assignments.

Language Policy In accord with McGill University’s Charter of Students’ Rights, students in this course have the right to submit in English or in French any written work that is to be graded.

Project

The project will involve the development of an interactive card game called Five Hundred (a.k.a 500, or "Cinq Cent" in French). See all project details, resources, and deadlines on the myCourses site. The game will pit one human player and one robot player against a team of robot players. Alternately, the game engine will also support completely automatic playing, for the purpose of testing and evaluating the skills of the robots.

Lectures

In-class use of mobile computing devices: Laptops, mobile phones, and other gadgets can be used in class as long as this is done in a respectful and non-disruptive manner. Please note that loud typing, continual texting, gaming, and voice communication are disruptive activities and disallowed for that reason. No audio or video recording of any kind is allowed in class without the explicit permission of the instructor. If you are inconvenienced by the in-class use of computing devices (by others than yourself), please talk to the instructor. This policy is subject to revision at any point during the term. Additional background on the in-class use of computing devices at McGill.

This schedule is subject to change. It is strongly recommended to do the readings before class. The list of readings and references to required tools can be found on the myCourses page.

© Martin Robillard, 2012