COMP 303: Software Design

 

 

General Information:

Instructor: Jin Guo

Class Time: TR 4:05 PM - 5:25 PM

Location: Bronfman Building 151

Office Hour: Instructor: Wednesday 10am-11am, MC328

                    TAs: see below.

 

Course Description:

This course provides an in-depth introduction to the discipline of software design for building realistic and high-quality software applications. It will focus on object-oriented programming techniques, and cover topics related to managing software complexity and verifying that they work as expected. It will use Java for all the code examples and assignments. However, the considerations during the design process apply in all languages for practical software development. 

 

Expected Outcome:

After completing this course successful students should be able to:

•     Properly explain and apply general Design Principles (separation of concerns, encapsulation, substitutability, interface segregation, etc.) and important Design patterns;

•     Properly explain and apply design techniques such as UML Diagrams and Design by Contract;

•     Effective use programming language mechanisms such as exception handling, concurrency and synchronization, reflection;

•     Analyze and evaluate the quality of design solutions; correctly identify design smells and apply appropriate refactoring to eliminate them;

•     Gain experience on software development tools such as modern IDEs (Eclipse), automatic documentation and testing tools (JUnit and JavaDoc) and version control system (Git).

 

 

Reference Material:

·      Introduction to Software Design with Java, by Martin Robillard, lecture note for COMP 303. (LN)

·      The Pragmatic Programmer by Andrew Hunt and David Thomas, Addison-Wesley, 2000. (PP)

·      Effective Java by Joshua Bloch, 2nd ed., Addison-Wesley, 2008; 3rd ed. 2018. Either edition is fine. (EJ)

 

While I recommend you buy physical books, the eBooks can be accessed following the instruction here.

 

Prerequisites:

COMP 206 and COMP 250

 

Teaching Assistant:

Name	Email Address
Mathieu Nassif	mathieu.nassif@mail.mcgill.ca
Cheryl Wang	wenting.wang@mail.mcgill.ca
Deeksha Arya	deeksha.arya@mail.mcgill.ca
Shi Yan Du	shi.du@mail.mcgill.ca
Alexander Nicholson	alexander.nicholson@mail.mcgill.ca
Kian Ahrabian	kian.ahrabian@mail.mcgill.ca

 

 

TA Office Hours:

Time	TAs
Tuesday 2pm - 3pm	Mathieu Nassif , Deeksha Arya
Wednesday 1pm – 2pm	Alexander Nicholson, Kian Ahrabian
Friday 1pm - 2pm	Shi Yan Du, Cheryl Wang

Location: Trottier 3104

 

Assessment and Evaluation:

Assessment Method	When	Weight
Participation	in class + online	10%
Lab tests	4 sessions (Trottier 3120)	20%
Midterm	Feb 28th	30%
Final	Apr 30th, 9am	40%

 

·      It’s important to attend the lectures in order to gain the best learning experience – it cannot be replaced by watching the videos afterward. There will be random participation/attendance sheets to collect during this semester;

·      Our TA will try their best to support your learning. But considering this is a big class – many of you will have similar questions or concerns and many of you have will answers to other people’s questions, we encourage you to discuss your questions about the lectures and exercises online;

·      The participation during the class and the online discussion will count 10% of your final grades; The top 10% contributors for the online discussions will gain bonus credits of 3%;

·      Every part of the lecture will come with assignments and exercises. Those are for your practice and will not be graded. Instead, your practical skills will be evaluated through 4 lab tests that count 20% of your final grades.

·      Lab tests start week four. You are responsible to book the slot of lab test for each session in advance with the TAs.

·      Missing any of the lab test sessions, midterm or final exam will result zero grade for that assessment.

·      Any form of plagiarism, cheating is strictly banned during midterm or final exam. Integrity is crucial to this course and your future career. Any violation against academic integrity will be taken very seriously. For more information, please refer here.

 

 

Tentative Schedule:

Week	Date	Content	Reading/Reference
1	Jan 8th	Introduction	ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct LN:M0, PP:1, 6
	Jan 10th	M1-Encapsulation - 1	LN:M1, EJ3:15, 16, 17, 57,
2	Jan 15th	M1-Encapsulation - 2	LN:M1, PP:4, 21, 23, 24, 44, EJ3:56, 68, 71
	Jan 17th	M2-Types and Polymorphism -1	LN:M2, PP:8, EJ3:14, 22, 64
3	Jan 22nd	M2-Types and Polymorphism - 2	LN:M2, EJ3:24, 26, 29, 30, 31 Java Generics Tutorial
	Jan 24th	M2-Types and Polymorphism - 3	LN:M2
4	Jan 29th	M3-Object State - 1	LN:M3, EJ3: 10, 11, 54, 55
	Jan 31st	M3-Object State - 2	LN:M3, EJ3: 1, 3
5	Feb 5th	M4-Unit Testing - 1	LN:M4, PP:34
	Feb 7th	M4-Unit Testing - 2	LN:M4, PP:43
6	Feb 12th	M5-Composition - 1	LN:M5, EJ3: 13
	Feb 14th	M5-Composition - 2	LN:M5, PP: 26
7	Feb 17th	M6-Inheritance - 1	LN:M7, EJ3:19,20
	Feb 19th	M6-Inheritance - 2	LN:M7, EJ3:18
8	Feb 26th	Content Review
	Feb 28th	Midterm
9		Study Break
10	March 12th	Midterm Review
	March 14th	M7-Inversion of Control - 1	LN: M6
11	March 19th	M7-Inversion of Control - 2	LN: M6
	March 21st	M8-Design Patterns - 1	Design Patterns GOF book Visitor Pattern
12	March 26th	M8-Design Patterns- 2
	March 28th	M9-Concurrency - 1	Java Concurrency in Practice Chapter 1,2,3
13	April 2nd	M9-Concurrency - 2
	April 4th	M10-Refactoring	Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code
14	April 9th	M11-Design for Usability	10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design Improving API Usability
	April 11th	M11- Software Engineering Ethics and Wrap-up