Computer Science COMP230

Special Topics in Computer Science

http://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~jcleary/230/

John G. Cleary.
Office: FG2.01
Phone: 838-4378
e-mail: jcleary@cs.waikato.ac.nz

The aims of this course are to:

provide the personal skills, techniques and understanding necessary for writing correct code on time and to budget
provide an introduction to the skills, techniques and understanding necessary for working in a group on a software project
provide experience in the use of Java and Unix
provide experienc in the use of data structures in the context of programming projects

At the end of the course the student should be able to:

write correct Java code and have confidence in its correctness and maintainability
have insight into his own coding abilities and defect rates and be able to use this information to estimate completion times for projects
use Unix to develop Java software
be able to use library classes in Java and construct data structures in Java

"Extreme Programming Explained", Beck, K.
This is recommended reading and copies are available for purchase at the bookshop.

A number of on-line resources are available:

A book introducing Java;
How to settup for java on Linux;
Code examples from book;
Code for assignments as well as other examples.
Examples of nonproprietary code from ReelTwo - the classes of the form ThingTest.java are examples of test code for the class Thing.java.
Examples of test code from the mauve project. Have a look under gnu/testlet/java for the beginning of some real examples of test code.
Documentation for the online code (including assignments).
java api html documentation of the java classes provided with the system - lots of stuff - years of reading;
Conventions for naming variables according to Sun. I also suggest the additional convention that all instance variables start with "m".

Final exam		0%
Internal assessment	100%
Assignments		25%
Project			50%
Test			25%

The assignments to be handed in each week at the lecture time.
Assignments