CSGA 6375: Object-Oriented Software Design

Instructor information

General information

Faculty: Dr. A. G. Werschulz

• Office: Rm 815D.
• Phone: (212) 636-6325

Class meetings:

Thursdays, 4:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m., in Room 520.

Office hours:

• Mondays: 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
• Thursdays: 11:30 p.m. to 12:30 p.m.
• Thursdays: 3:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.

Text and Readings

Grading

• programming projects: 50%.
• midterm exam: 20%
• final exam: 20%
• participation: 10%

Programming projects will be graded according to the following criteria:

• Correctness: 60%. The program should work correctly. It should produce correct results for valid input. It should handle invalid inputs appropriately; at the very minimum, it should ``fail gracefully''.
• Style: 40%. This includes quality of the user interface, and coding style. Here are some guides that may help you with the latter:
  • I have written a guide to getting better grades. Although this is slightly geared to courses having a lab component (in this case, CISC 2000/2010), there's a lot of good advice here. Read it!
  • Bjarne Stroustrup (the inventor of C++) has a style guide on the website for his text Programming: Principles and Practice Using C++.
  • Chapter 3 of our text has a set of coding standards. We will pretty much adhere to same.
  You might notice that these style guides don't agree 100% with each other. There's a good Scott Adams (or maybe Randall J. Schwartz) quote about the joy of having multiple sets of standards, each disagreeing with the other, but I don't remember what it is. :-)

Class email list:

oosd AT dsm.fordham.edu. This can be used for both announcements and discussion.

Protocol

• Programming projects: I hope to assign one programming project from each chapter of the text. Unless specified otherwise, each project will be due at the class meeting immediately after it is assigned.
• Midterm exam: Tentatively scheduled for Thursday, October 11, during the usual class period.
• Final exam:Will be held on Thursday, December 20, during the usual class period.

Additional Remarks

• You should read the following documents:
  • Mission statement (what this course is about).
  • Cheating policy
  • The official class syllabus.
• Feel free to look at the overhead slides I'm using for this class.
• Material that I wish to share with the class may be found in the "share directory" ~agw/class/oosd/share, which may be accessed from any of the Linux computers in the dsm.fordham.edu subnet. (They cannot be accessed via the Web.) Here you will find things such as the following:
  • Source code for the book's examples (in the src subdirectory of the share directory). This was extracted from a gzipped tarball of same that was provided by the authors; if you want to install same on your own computer, your best bet is to grab the latter and un-tar it.
  • Support material for programming assignments, each in its own subdirectory.
  • Other material that I think will be of general interest.
• I wrote a guide to getting grades for my CISC 1600 and CISC 2000 classes. Although some of the content might be tilted towards those courses, most of the information will help you understand issues relating to program style, which weighs in at 40% of the grade for a program.
• I'm assuming that you have some experience programming on our Departmental Linux systems. Here are some resources that might help you in this regard, should you need them:
  • There is an online introduction on using the Linux computer systems at Lincoln Center that belong to the Computer and Information Sciences Department.
  • Our departmental machines run Linux, which is a free Unix-like operating system. Many websites have material on Unix and Linux. I have collected a sample of same. You should especially look at the material for beginners.
  • We strongly encourage you to use the emacs editor.
  • When you eventually get into templates, you'll find that they can be tricky. You'll also find that the C++ compiler will sometimes generate a bewildering maze of error messages when dealing with same. There's a program named gfilt that can help you tame this beast.
• If you believe that you have a disabling condition that may interfere with your ability to participate in the activities, coursework, or assessment of the object of this course, you may be entitled to accommodations. If so, please schedule an appointment to speak with me immediately or you may go to the Office of Disability Services (LL207, x6282). Under the Americans with Disabilities Act and Section 504 of the Vocational Rehabilitation Act of 1973, all students, with or without disabilities, are entitled to equal access to the programs and activities of Fordham University.

Last modified: Mon Nov 19 12:22:29 2012