Implementation, run-time analysis

Two Weeks

Reading, writing

Implementation, Recursion, Graphs

Suppose you are working tech. support for Starbuck’s, and have to tackle the problem of delivery truck routing. Specifically: you need to write a program that will take the location of a supply center and a list of Starbuck locations that are resupplied from that center, and produces a route that will get a truck from the supply center to each of the stores and back while driving the minimum number of miles possible (and hence, presumably, minimizing both fuel and labor costs). It turns out that writing a program to find these optimal route in polynomial time is a really difficult. However, if you are not worried about runtime then the algorithm becomes straight-forward. And really, really slow. You need to design the best tool you can, and be prepared to explain (in writing) why it works to a colleague, boss, or even to yourself.

This is an example of the Traveling Salesperson Problem, a problem that shows up (in some variation) in many important applications. If you are going to address it, you probably want to model the problem with a graph: each node represents a store location, while edges represent distance. Graphs are one of the most useful general models in Computer Science, and having the correct, efficient, implementation of the Graph ADT (along with basic functionality) is of some importance. In this assignment you will implement the two most commonly used graph data types, and on top of that write a TSP implementation.

N/A

Memo

Less than a week

Writing

Design

The purpose of this assignment is to further examine and compare two tools to support object design: Class diagrams and sequence (interaction) diagrams. When designing the classes (objects) we need to answer the following key questions:
• What software classes should we implement to produce the product?
• What are the responsibilities of each class (what are the attributes and methods)?
• How do the classes interact with one another and the actors?

Class diagrams and sequence diagrams are visual tools that help us to explore possible answers to the above design questions, and to document our decisions. Class and sequence diagrams are very commonly used design tools, so knowledge of these tools should be helpful to you in your future studies or career. In addition, the two diagrams model different aspects of the software, so the two diagrams are complementary.

In this memo to your supervisor you will summarize the purpose of static and dynamic models and give your own opinion on which type of model is most challenging and useful aid to software design.

N/A

Navigating API documentation

Laboratory

reading

Coding

The software you will write almost always depends on making use of packages, classes, and methods that were developed by other programmers. In order to use software written by others, it is necessary to be able to navigate and understand the documentation for that software.

In this assignment, you will navigate the Java API Documentation, and use it to learn about Java packages and classes you probably haven't seen before. You will read about classes and methods, and then write short pieces of Java code that use those classes and methods.

After completing this activity, you should be able to:

• Navigate through and read parts of Java's API documentation to find descriptions and specifications of classes, methods, and constructors.

• Solve small programming problems by using new classes, methods, and constructors that you learn about in the Java API documentation

N/A

design document, code, comments, pseudo-code, bug report, code review, reading code, results of code inspection, documentation, reflection, tech report

Two Weeks

reading, writing

tools, continuous quality assurance, comments, documentation, research, problem solving

BUG/ENHANCEMENT REPORT
Technical Task: When working in the real-world, many times you will be given an existing piece of code that you must understand before you can implement any enhancements or fixes. And many times, the original developer of the code is no longer available – leaving you to figure out what the code is doing.
Professional Setting: Students works for a company that has purchased another.
Professional Role: Students are members of a project team.
Deliverable: Bug/Enhancement report.
Real-world Audience: A project manager.
How the Audience will USE the student's communication: The project manager will use the students' report to develop a plan for completing the project.

N/A

In addition, a student may even have to reverse-engineer a design document from the code where no documentation existed before. Debugging a program is something that every developer has to do. Whether for a student or a seasoned software engineer, figuring out what is wrong in a piece of code and fixing the issue is a necessary skill.

Program comments, code, Problems encountered report, task report

One Week

Writing comments, code and problems report

Programming language basics, method definitions, Object Oriented Language features

You have been given a design document that includes UML diagram for all the classes needed to simulate a car audio system. You are to code and comment the classes designed so that they can be used by a programmer in developing the simulator.

N/A

Memo, Position Paper

One Week

writing, reading

Testing

The initial impression that many people have when they enter the computer science field is that the bulk of our work, and the most important part of our work, is coding programs. After all, practitioners within this field are oftentimes called computer programmers. However, in most cases, coding will be a small part or what we actually do. One specific example is testing.

It is important for us to understand the benefits and implications of each of our responsibilities as we move forward into our career. To do this, we must have good information to help us schedule our time and prioritize. In addition, we must be able to communicate this information to others so that they have similar priorities.

N/A

This assignment can extended by expanding each step with the student providing interim deliverables for each and then requiring the student to collect the interim results into a final advocacy document.

Memo

Less than a week

Writing

Project management
Tools

The purpose of this assignment is to introduce revision control (or version control) and the specific product called Subversion (SVN). Revision control is another tool used extensively by teams of software engineers. Knowledge of revision control tools is essential for organizations that employ teams of developers, so it will very helpful for a career in software engineering. In this memo to your supervisor you will summarize the benefit of version control to our class project.

N/A

code, run-time analysis

Two Weeks

reading

Implementation, Recursion, trees/heaps, selection of algorithm and data structures

Workplace Scenario:
You have been hired to design a new Starbucks locator smart phone app. The app will download with a list of U.S. Starbucks locations. When activated, the app will be provide with the coordinates by the device GPS, and locate the closest Starbucks to the current position (which it can then feed to a map app that will be in charge of calculating the route). Your problem is to figure out how to maintain the list in such a way that it can be quickly queried. You could just scan the full list – but given the size of the list, and the user’s speed expectations, that isn’t going to make for a happy client. You need to do better for that.

On the bright side: you can consider the list static. New Starbucks do not open all that often. So your data structure does not need to support an insert data structure. (When there is an update, you can just reconstruct the entire data structure from the modified list during down time.) So you priority is the query runtime. The user need to find the closest Starbuck’s as fast as possible – the user needs coffee now!!!


Importance: In this you will gain experience with dictionary data structures by designing and implementing a data structure that support fast “nearest neighbor” queries. The ideal data structure for the assignment is a space-dividing structure such as the kd-tree; implementations based on this will be considerably faster than any alternative without sacrificing on precision. There are, however, many alternatives – students unable to implement such a structure will be able to make use of simpler structure, at a significant loss of time and/or precision (and, hence, length).

N/A

requirements, test cases, UML diagram, code, post-mortem report

Several Weeks

reading, writing

UML diagrams

You’ve been given a problem statement from a client where they want you to build the project. In order to do this, you need to first convert that project statement into a set of testable requirements and a description of how you will verify that the requirements have been met. There are two audiences for this document: the client, who will review them to ensure that you have identified what is required, and the software testers, who will use these test cases to validate the final product.

The next step is to design the software. This will be documented using a UML diagram. The audience is the software developers, who will use them to code the system. The resulting code will then be tested using the test procedures provided.

After completing the task, you will write a project post-mortem report describing how long it took to implement the project, what issues you encountered, how your design changed, and why you needed to make these changes (there is also a project reflection component to this which is not intended to be true to a workplace context). The purpose of the report is to provide insight to improve the design and estimation for future projects. The main audiences are your manager, yourself, and other developers. The project reflection will be used by your instructor to improve future projects.

N/A

Memo

Short Activity

Reading
Writing

Program Design
Continuous Quality Assurance
Coding

The purpose of this assignment is to explore two Extreme Programming (XP) practices: test-driven development and refactoring. The practice of test-driven development calls for software developers to create tests before code is actually produced. The example in Chapter 21 is based on unit testing, but test-driven development can be applied to other tests, such as feature tests, usability tests, load tests, etc.

Refactoring is a programming practice aimed at refining code without changing its behavior (it is not debugging). Over time about 100 named refactoring patterns have been identified.

In this memo to your supervisor, you will summarize the key points behind test-drive development and refactoring, and you will identify an example of how refactoring can be applied.

Test-driven development and refactoring are practices that you can apply now in your other classes, and later in an internship or in your career.

N/A