CS-701 Software Design

Section E8TPA (2288) - Dr. Vickery

Fall 2001

Course Administration

Class Meetings

The class meets in Science Building room B-141 from 8:30 to 9:45 PM on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Office Hours

Most office hour business can be handled by email. My address is [ vickery@qc.edu ]. Be sure to include "CS-701" in the subject line of every message you send me, and be sure to include your name in the body of each message.

If you want to see me in person, I will be available in my office, Science Building room A-222 from 10:00 to 10:30 pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Textbooks

There is one required textbook for the course:

Stevens, W. Richard
Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment
Addison-Wesley, 1992
ISBN 0-201-56317-7

We will cover material from chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10, and 11.

There are two recommended reference books for the course:

Harbison, S. P. and Steele, G. L. Jr.
C: A Reference Manual, Fourth Edition
Prentice Hall, 1995
ISBN 0-13-326224-3

Das, Sumitabha
Your UNIX: The Ultimate Guide
McGraw-Hill, 2001
ISBN 0-07-240500-7

Reading assignments are on the [ Course Schedule ] web page.

Assignments and Exams

There will be several programming assignments, which will count 20% of your course grade. That is, if there are five programming assignments, each one will count 4% of your course average.
You must submit your own homework solutions, and you are expected to write all your own code. I do not claim I will be able to determine whether you actually do so, but if I do detect that you submit code based on another person's work, you will automatically fail the course. The idea is to use the assignments as a way to practice the material covered in the course, not as a test of your knowledge. The assignments will be graded on a 5 point scale, and I will provide you with feedback on your assignments insofar as I have time to do so. I will also provide copies of "correct" solutions to them after the due dates.
There will be one midterm exam and a final exam. The midterm will count 40% of your final grade, and the final will count the other 40%.
Exams will be a mixture of short answer questions plus a significant amount of code writing. The code you write will test how well you have mastered the programming concepts in the assignments you have done. Note, however, that it will not work if you just memorize code, because the exam questions will be different from the assignment solutions.

Check Your Grades

You can check the scores I have recorded for your homework and exams at the [ Check Grades ] web page. To use this facility, you will need to enter your student ID number and a "code word." The code word is like a password, but it is not as secure as a real password because you must tell me what it is in order to set it up. (Never send a real password to anyone, not even a professor!) See [ Homework Assignment 1 ] for details.

Grades become permanent and cannot be changed two weeks after they are posted, so be sure to monitor your grades regularly to be sure they are recorded correctly.