CS 3500: Object-Oriented Design

Syllabus --Fall 2016

This website is for a prior semester of CS3500. Please go to http://www.ccs.neu.edu/course/cs3500 for the current semester, and update your bookmarks accordingly.

Meeting places & times

• Hurtig Hall 130, MW, 2:50 PM – 4:30 PM

• Shillman Hall 305, TF, 9:50 – 11:30 AM

• International Village 019, TF, 1:35 – 3:15 PM

Course staff & office hours

General information

CS 3500 teaches a rigorous approach to object-oriented programming and design, with an emphasis on abstraction, modularity, and code reuse as applied to the building and understanding of large-scale systems. We will explore the basic mechanisms and concepts of object-oriented programming: object, class, message, method, interface, encapsulation, polymorphism, and inheritance. Students will gain hands-on experience with tools and techniques that facilitate the creation and maintenance of applications using the Java programming language.

Prerequisites

This course assumes familiarity with programming in the style of How to Design Programs, and basic knowledge of the Java programming language as introduced in CS 2510.

Exams

We will have two examinations:

• Midterm Monday 10/24, in class

• Final exam Thursday 12/15, 3:30–5:30pm, MU 201 and RI 200

Materials

Software

For programming assignments, we will use Java 8. You should download and install the Java SE Development Kit, version 8 from Oracle.

The supported IDE (integrated development environment) for the course is IntelliJ IDEA. This is the IDE that the instructor uses in lecture, and we may occasionally give instructions for how to perform particular tasks in IDEA. You are free to use a different IDE, but we may not be able to help you if you run into trouble. IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition may be downloaded free of charge, and I’ve posted instructions to license the Ultimate Edition on Piazza.

If you are having trouble setting up IntelliJ, Prof Shesh has recorded a video demonstrating how to configure your environment here.

Books

There is no required textbook, but you may find these books useful.

• Joshua Bloch, Effective Java, Second Edition, Addison-Wesley, 2008. (Highly recommended. All Java programmers should read and understand this book.)

• Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson, and John Vlissides, Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software, Addison-Wesley, 1995. (The standard reference for object-oriented design patterns.)

• Peter Sestoft, Java Precisely, Second Edition, MIT, 2005. (May be especially useful if your Java skills are weak.)

Online resources

• Piazza discussion board—ask questions here!

• Google’s Java style guide—follow this! Your grade will reflect your adherance to good style.

• Java API Reference Standard Edition, version 8

• The Java Tutorials

• An interactive tutorial on using Git

Lectures

This table specifies the lecture schedule; topics are tentative.

Testing

Testing your code is sufficiently important that we’ve devoted an entire page to it. Please read these notes, for each and every assignment you work on.

Homework schedule

Homework will usually be due at 8:59 PM; the day of the week varies, so you should check each individual assignment to be sure. General homework policies are here.

This homework schedule is tentative and subject to change at the instructor’s discretion.

Course policies

Collaboration and academic integrity

You may not collaborate with anyone on any of the exams. You may not use any electronic tools, including phones, tablets, netbooks, laptops, desktop computers, etc. If in doubt, ask a member of the course staff.

Some homework assignments will be completed with an assigned partner, and some may involve a larger team (TBD). You must collaborate with your assigned partner or team, as specified, on homework assignments. You may request help from any staff member on homework. (When you are working with a partner, we strongly recommend that you request help with your partner.) You may use the Piazza bulletin board to ask questions regarding assignments, so long as your questions (and answers) do not reveal information regarding solutions. You may not get any help from anyone else on a homework assignment; all material submitted must be your own. If in doubt, ask a member of the course staff.

Providing illicit help to another student is also cheating, and will be punished the same as receiving illicit help. It is your responsibility to safeguard your own work.

Students who cheat will be reported to the university’s office on academic integrity and penalized by the course staff, at our discretion, up to and including failing the course.

If you are unclear on any of these policies, please ask a member of the course staff.

Homework

In general, you should submit your homework according to the instructions on the web page for the individual assignments.

Submitting by email

Homework will ordinarily be submitted to the CS 3500 submission server at https://cs3500.ccs.neu.edu. However, sometimes (detailed below) it may be necessary to submit by email. In this case, email your instructor with the subject line “HW N submission” (where N is the appropriate homework number). Attach your source files to the email individually; do not use a ZIP file or other kind of archive.

Submission troubles

If you have trouble submitting to the server and you have time before the deadline, please wait few minutes and try again; it may also be worth checking on Piazza to find out whether other students are experiencing similar difficulties. If upon retrying you still cannot submit, email Dr. Shesh (ashesh@ccs). Or if you don’t have time to try again then you should submit by email.

Late days & late work

Each student gets four free, no-questions-asked late days for the term. The purpose of late days is make the extension process fair and transparent by getting the instructors out of the extension-granting business entirely. Instead, when you need an extension, you can take one—provided you have a late day remaining.

To use a late day, log on to the submission server after the deadline has passed. You will see a link to request a late day for the particular homework. The server will keep track of the number of used late days. Conserve your late days carefully.

No more than one late day may be used on any one homework. You may not look at and must avoid gaining knowledge of the self-evaluation questions until you have submitted your late assignment. Late days cannot be divided fractionally, but must be used whole. Late days cannot be transferred to or shared with a partner, so in order to take an extension both you and your partner must have sufficient late days remaining. Choose your partners carefully.

Using a late day to submit your files does not automatically grant you a late day for the self-eval: it will remain due at the normal time.

Grades

Your grade will be based on your performance on the problem sets (60%) and the exams (15%, 25%). Material for examinations will be cumulative.

The grades will computed on an absolute basis: there will be no overall curving. The instructor may choose to curve an individual homework or exam, but please do not bank on such a chance.

The mapping of raw point totals to letter grades is given below. Please note that these grade boundaries may move slightly at the discretion of the instructor, but the grade boundary for A is unlikely to change.