COMP 303 Software Development - Fall 2014

Basic Information

Description

Principles, mechanisms, techniques, and tools for software development, with a focus on software design.

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...

Reference Material

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

Complementary Resource: Martin, Robert. Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftmanship. Prentice-Hall, 2008. Available on-line from the McGill domain.

Course Work and Evaluation

Important Notes:

1. If you miss a midterm exam, the grade of your other midtem will be used. Be sure to retain documentation justifying your absence. You do not need to present this justification unless required (see below).
2. If you miss both midterm exams, you will need to present original, verifiable documentation justifying your absence for both exams. Valid justification is limited to unforseeable and unpreventable circumstances.
3. The following material is subject to evaluation: Material 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 assignments. 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.

Lectures

General philosophy on the value of lectures, and related policies:

1. Lectures will be designed to complement the course material with demonstrations, examples, discusssions, and class participation (to the extent possible). Lectures will not replace the mandatory readings and assignments, which should be done by the deadline posted.
2. The lectures will not be Power Pointless. I will occasionally use slides to provide visual support for the material. The slides should not be expected to consitute a self-contained study document. I must emphatically warn anyone against attempting to pass the course by memorizing the slides.
3. I will try to provide lecture summaries. However, taking notes can also be a good idea.
4. Although I strongly recommend coming to lectures, attendance is neither mandatory nor monitored.
5. To ensure that students who want to make the most of lectures can do so without distractions, computing devices of any kind are forbidden in the first four rows of the class. Laptops, mobile phones, and other gadgets can be used in the rest of the lecture room if done in a respectful and non-disruptive manner.
6. No audio or video recording of any kind is allowed in class without the explicit permission of the instructor.

Schedule

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, 2014