CS2013-final-report

CpSc 215: Software Development Foundations, Clemson University
School of Computing, Clemson, SC USA 29634
Jason O. Hallstrom
Cathy Hochrine
Murali Sitaraman
Jacob Sorber
{jasonoh,chochri,murali,jsorber}@clemson.edu
http://people.cs.clemson.edu/~jasonoh/courses/cpsc_215_fall_2012/
http://www.cs.clemson.edu/resolve/teaching/teaching.html
www.cs.clemson.edu/resolve/
Knowledge Areas that contain topics and learning outcomes covered in the course
Knowledge Area
Software Development Fundamentals (SDF) 18
Programming Languages (PL) 12
Software Engineering (SE) 12
Total Hours of Coverage
Where does the course fit in your curriculum
CpSc 215 is a required course taken by all students pursuing a B.A. or B.S. in Computer Science, or a B.S. in
Computer Information Systems. It is typically taken in the first or second semester of the sophomore year. On
average, two sections of 25-30 students each take the course each semester. Students must receive a ‘C’ or better in
CpSc 102 or CpSc 210 prior to taking the course. These courses offer a foundation in basic computational problem
solving using the C programming language, with a brief introduction to object-oriented principles in C++. CpSc 215
serves as a pre-requisite for the majority of the upper-level courses in the computing curriculum at Clemson.
What is covered in the course
Major topics covered, in their approximate order of coverage, include the following:
• Java Basics: Introduction, interpreted versus compiled languages
• Java Basics: Packages, classpaths, the Java compiler
• Java Basics: The Eclipse integrated development environment
• Java Basics: Parameter passing, shallow versus deep copying, value versus reference semantics
• Java Classes: Fields, methods, accessibility modifiers
• Java Classes: Constructors, overloading
• Java Classes: Static fields, methods, initializers
• Design Patterns: Introduction, historical context
• Design Patterns: Singleton, Flyweight
• Java Libraries: java.io.*, java.util.*, java.net.*, java.math.*
• Java Interfaces: Declaring, implementing, using as types
• Abstract Data Structures: Stacks, queues, sets
• Analytical Reasoning: Introduction to interface contracts
• Analytical Reasoning: Review of basic mathematical types (integers, tuples, strings, sets)
• Analytical Reasoning: Formal contract specifications
• Abstract Data Structures: Partial maps (dictionaries), linked-lists
• Analytical Reasoning: Contract-based Testing and Tracing
• Design Patterns: Decorator
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