Principles of Software Construction Objects, Design, and Concurrency

Overview

Software engineers today are less likely to design data structures and algorithms from scratch and more likely to build systems from library and framework components. In this course, students engage with concepts related to the construction of software systems at scale, building on their understanding of the basic building blocks of data structures, algorithms, program structures, and computer structures. The course covers technical topics in four areas: (1) concepts of design for complex systems, (2) object oriented programming, (3) techniques for robustness, including testing and static and dynamic analysis for programs, and (4) concurrent software. Students will gain concrete experience designing and building medium-sized systems. This course substantially improves its students' ability to apply general computer science knowledge to real-world problems using real-world tools and techniques.

After completing this course, students will:

Coordinates

Tu/Th 12:00 - 1:20 p.m. in Hall of the Arts 160

Charlie Garrod
charlie@cs.cmu.edu
WEH 5120
Chris Timperley
ctimperley@cmu.edu
WEH 4206

The instructors have an open door policy: If the instructors' office doors are open and no-one else is meeting with us, we are happy to answer any course-related questions. For appointments, email the instructors.

Course Syllabus and Policies

The syllabus covers course overview and objectives, evaluation, time management, recommended books, late work policy, and collaboration policy.

Learning Goals

The learning goals describe what we want students to know or be able to do by the end of the semester. We evaluate whether learning goals have been achieved through assignments and exams.

Course Calendar

Schedule

We are expecting several changes to the course this semester. The schedule below is a draft based on previous instances of the course and is likely to change.

Date Topic Reading assignments* Assignments due*
Tue, Aug 27 Course introduction and course infrastructure
Wed, Aug 28 rec 1 Introduction to course infrastructure
Thu, Aug 29 Introduction to Java Optional: Java Precisely (e.g., Sec. 4, 9, 10, 22)
Tue, Sep 3 Design for change, information hiding Effective Java, Items 15 and 16
Wed, Sep 4 rec 2 Unit testing, continuous integration
Thu, Sep 5 Specification and unit testing Optional: Effective Java, Items 10, 11, 68; UML and Patterns, Ch. 16 hw1 Intro to OO and course infrastructure
Tue, Sep 10 Design for reuse: Delegation and inheritance Effective Java, Items 17 and 50
Wed, Sep 11 rec 3 Behavioral subtyping
Thu, Sep 12 Introduction to design patterns, and design patterns for reuse Optional: Effective Java, Items 18, 19, and 20 hw2 Polymorphism, unit testing
Tue, Sep 17 Design patterns for reuse, continued UML and Patterns, Ch. 9 and 10
Wed, Sep 18 rec 4 Inheritance and delegation
Thu, Sep 19 Object-oriented analysis: Modeling a problem domain Optional: UML and Patterns, Ch. 17; Effective Java, Item 49, 54, and 69 hw3 Inheritance and delegation
Tue, Sep 24 Object-oriented design: Responsibility assignment UML and Patterns, Ch. 14, 15, and 16
Wed, Sep 25 rec 5 Design process
Thu, Sep 26 Midterm exam 1
Tue, Oct 1 Defensive programming, immutability, and more testing
Wed, Oct 2 rec 6 Design patterns
Thu, Oct 3 Introduction to multi-threading and GUIs hw4a Designing complex software
Tue, Oct 8 Design case study: Java Swing UML and Patterns, Ch. 26.1 and 26.4
Wed, Oct 9 rec 7 Introduction to GUIs
Thu, Oct 10 Design case study: Java Collections Optional: Effective Java, Item 1
Tue, Oct 15 Design for large-scale reuse: Libraries & frameworks Effective Java, Items 6, 7, and 63
Wed, Oct 16 rec 8 GUIs++
Thu, Oct 17 Designing APIs hw4b Design to implementation
Tue, Oct 22 Designing APIs, continued Effective Java, Items 51, 60, 62, and 64
Wed, Oct 23 rec 9 Frameworks
Thu, Oct 24 Software engineering projects and teams Optional: Effective Java, Items 52 and 53 hw4c GUI implementation
Tue, Oct 29 Concurrency: Java Primitives
Wed, Oct 30 rec 10 Git and Github++
Thu, Oct 31 Midterm exam 2
Tue, Nov 5 Concurrency: Java Primitives, continued Java Concurrency in Practice, Ch. 11.3 and 11.4 hw5a Framework design
Wed, Nov 6 rec 11 Framework presentations
Thu, Nov 7 Concurrency: Safety, Structuring applications Optional: Java Concurrency in Practice, Ch. 10
Tue, Nov 12 Concurrency: Parallelizing algorithms, concurrency frameworks Optional: Java Concurrency in Practice, Ch. 12 hw5b Framework and plugin implementation
Wed, Nov 13 rec 12 Concurrency
Thu, Nov 14 Design case study: Java functional APIs and streams
Tue, Nov 19 Toward software engineering in practice hw5c Plugins for others' frameworks
Wed, Nov 20 rec 13 Java concurrency framework
Thu, Nov 21 Developer tools and devops
Tue, Nov 26 Design pattern tour
Wed, Nov 27 No recitation: Thanksgiving
Thu, Nov 28 No lecture: Thanksgiving
Tue, Dec 3 Software engineering anti-patterns
Wed, Dec 4 rec 14 Java functional APIs and streams hw6 Concurrency
Thu, Dec 5 A puzzling finale
Mon, Dec 9 Final exam, 1 - 4 p.m.
* = For details, see assignment on Piazza or your GitHub repository.