CISC 280 - Program Development Techniques - Fall 2008

Instructor: Prof. McCoy	TA: Sophie Che
Office: Room 201, 77-79 E. Delaware (The Green House)	Office: 102 Smith Hall
Hours: Tuesday 3:30pm-5:00pm, Thursday 11:00am-12:30pm	Hours: Monday 3:30pm-5:30pm
Phone: 831-1956
Email: mccoy@cis.udel.edu	Email: Sophie.ta.ud@gmail.com

Textbook

The textbook can be found online here.

Web Page

http://www.cis.udel.edu/~mccoy/courses/cisc280-08f/

Project Number

The computer (composers) project number is ????.

Course Purpose

By this point in your Computer Science education, you have been introduced to at least two programming languages and a variety of program and data structures. During those courses your task was to solve a problem in the language that you were learning.

The primary purpose of this course is to give you a high-level picture of the possibilities of programming, i.e. an introduction to programming paradigms. With this knowledge, you will be able to consider the best way to tackle a problem without necessarily thinking about the language (and its abilities and limitations) first. We might also have called the course "Software Engineering in the Small".

Although this course incorporates a great deal of programming, its intellectual focus is not on particular programming-language constructs, data structures, or algorithms -- these are regarded as details. Instead, students are brought to appreciate a diversity of major programming paradigms and concepts: data abstraction, procedural abstraction, symbolic computation, object-oriented programming, functional programming, logic programming, data-directed programming, and constructing embedded interpreters. Beyond that, there is a central concern with the technology of implementing languages and linguistic support for different programming paradigms. Students are encouraged to regard themselves as computer language designers and implementers rather than only language users.

These topics will be examined at a theoretical level in the classroom, and then investigated at an implementation level using the language Scheme (an educational dialect of Lisp). Scheme is the ideal language for this class because no other language implements as many of the high-level methods for organizing programs and data. Because it uses no type checking, and makes no distinction between program and data, data and procedural abstraction are natural.  Also, the syntax of Lisp and related languages is an order of magnitude simpler than the syntax of popular imperative languages, so very little time is spent learning rules about how to type commands to implement an idea. Instead, we can devote our time to considering the ideas themselves!

Objectives:

• Have a command of the major programming techniques for approaching problems and controlling program complexity.

• Develop a sense of the elements of style and the aesthetics of programming.

• Feel secure in writing, reading, and modifying large programs written in exemplary style.

• Be able to use modern approaches to dealing with time computationally (objects with state, functional programming, concurrent programming, lazy evaluation, nondeterministic programming).

• Understand some of the issues of computer language design and implementation.

Learning Experiences

• Some General Advice

Topics

Tentative Calendar (updated weekly)

Grading

Homeworks:

There will be 5-10 homework assignments. These will generally be due at the start of class and will often be discussed during class (so they cannot be turned in late).

Labs:

There will be weekly lab assignments. These labs will be designed to be completed in the lab. Attendance at lab is required. You may leave the lab as soon as your assignment is turned in for grading, or at the end of the lab period if you do not complete the lab during that time.  (Provided that you go to lab) labs may be turned in up to the start of class on Tuesday.

Projects:

There will be one or two programming projects.

Exams:

There will be two midterms (tentatively ?March 15th? and ?April 21st?) and a final exam (during final exam week).

Overall Course Grade:

         21% Final
         34% Midterms
         15% Homework
         20% Labs
         10% Projects

Here are some grading standards you may find useful.

Policies

• Assignments are due at the beginning of class. That means the assignment needs to be on my desk at the start of class. Do not come to class late and try to turn in your assignment.  It needs to be there when class starts.
• Labs may be turned in up to the start of class on Tuesday (the class directly after the lab).
• The syllabus and all accompanying dates are subject to change at any time; all such changes will be announced in class and updated on this web page.
• Cooperative efforts at understanding the material conceptually are encouraged. Discussing bugs and suggesting debugging strategies is fine. However, all written work and programs you turn in must be your own (except for the shared Lisp library code we will be using, as explained in the programming assignments). Submitting work that is not your own is considered cheating, as per Departmental and University policy. Please note that downloading solutions from the web is copying and is strictly forbidden. Any evidence of such activity will be dealt with according to the University judicial system.
• If you can't come for scheduled office hours, please send me email; I'll be happy to schedule a meeting at some other mutually-agreed upon time.
• Typically, labs and homework will be graded by the TA, and exams by the instructor.  Once an assignment is returned, you have a week to request that your grade on the assignment be re-examined. Submit the assignment to the person who graded it along with a cover sheet explaining where you think you should be credited with additional points and why. If you submit for re-grading to the TA and are not satisfied with the result, you may re-submit to the instructor.
• If you have some sort of problem or disagreement with the TA or instructor, bring it to the instructor's attention before it becomes a big problem!

Software

Documentation for Dr.Scheme is part of the package (use the HELP menu), however you can also find documentation HERE. Local, UD documentation is HERE.