CS130 Software Development

CS130 -- Software Development
Fall, 2004
(last updated 11/11/2004)

Updates:

[2004/11/11] Do the right thing. Here is a story pointing to the dangers and risks associated with using the software we write.
[2004/11/02] Here is the link to Open Sources at O'Reilly's website. I was mentioning Appendix A during discussion, but there are a number of interesting articles there.

Professor:

Wayne Iba,
iba@westmont.edu,
office: new Math and Computer Science Building,
phone: 565-6799

Office hours: see my main page
Textbooks:

Stephen R. Schach. (2004). Object-Oriented and Classical Software Engineering (sixth edition). McGraw Hill. ISBN 0072865512. [required]
Brooks, Frederick P. Jr. The Mythical Man-Month (anniversary edition). Addison-Wesley. ISBN 0201835959. [required]
Harvey, Michael. (2003). The Nuts and Bolts of College Writing. Hackett Publishing. ISBN 0872205738. [required]

Time and place: TTh, 1:15-3:05 pm; VL 106

Official Syllabus

Tentative class schedule

For quite some time, software has been the limiting factor for most problem domains -- both in terms of functionality and in terms of cost. The discipline of software engineering has grown up around the problem of designing, developing, testing, and maintaining large software systems. The class covers an overview of software engineering and its methods and will engage in a reasonably large software development project. This class will probably require the dominant share of your available time; please plan accordingly.

To repeat, this class will probably be alot of work. Do your best to plan your overall schedule so that you are not taking other demanding courses during the same semester as CS130. If you choose to ignore this advice, do not complain about the workload in Software Development. I understand that you're taking other classes but I expect CS130 to be your priority.

This class will require significant amounts of writing; under the new GE, it has been provisionally designated as satisfying the writing-intensive requirement. There will naturally be extensive code writing, but you will also be writing multiple technical documents in service of your project. You will also be writing (and rewriting) six to twelve essays in response to assigned readings. Please read these general comments on the reading assignments and your required analyses. The Harvey book above is required although if you already have a copy of Strunk and White that will suffice. The Havey book is required in Professor Work's classes, so you might already have a copy. So much the better. I expect you to become a better writer during this course. I recommend that you browse Professor Work's extensive website; there is a wealth of information in general and I hope to follow his teaching philosophy quite closely. In other words, you should consider anything found on his website to be an addendum to CS130's syllabus

Other links

Here is a link to Paul's Recipe for a Perfect Project.

Here is another entertaining essay from Umberto Eco, Mac is Catholic, DOS is Protestant, with a link to a response.

Acknowledgements: I have borrowed extensively from Professor Richard Taylor's website at UC Irvine and specifically from his courses ICS52 and ICS125. I will extensively use the lecture slides provided at Schach's textbook website. In many cases, I will be directly taking writing assignment procedures from Professor Work.