CS3215: Software Engineering Project

2009-07-03T14:12:00.003+08:00

Term over, waiting for the new term...

In case you plan to take CS3215 in the coming Aug 2009 semester, please note that the material you find here are from the previous semester. A/P Stan Jarzabek is the course lecturer for the Aug 2009 semester. Await updates...
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2009-04-13T18:38:00.005+08:00

Final stretch

When writing the report...
... do not be hindered by the format given or the page limit. Both are meant to be guidelines only. What's more important is that you include any project-related thing you did that could earn you credit. Equally important is that you report them in a reader-friendly form.

Wicked test cases
Use the "description" tag to explain the objective of each test case.
Note that we have added a root tag "testcasefile" (a very minor modification). The WickedTestcaseSubmissionFormat.xml has been updated accordingly.

Submitting performance test cases
When you submit wicked test cases, you may also submit a set of performance test cases if you wish to. That is, a set of "typical" BOOL files (1KLOC, 10KLOC, 100KLOC, 1MLOC) and 10 "typical" queries for each BOOL file. These are not graded. However, if we are satisfied that they are indeed "typical", some of them may be selected for final performance testing (giving you a slight advantage as your CAP is likely perform well for your own performance tests). Use the same format as wicked test cases when submitting these.

Making CAP compatible with our AT
To make your CAP work with our AT, you need to wrap this CAPTestAdapter.cs ("save target as...") around your CAP and compile it to create a CAPTestAdapater.dll. This is like the Wrapper.dll you had when system testing CAP1.0. Put CAPTestAdapater.dll in the "bin" directory of your submission.
You may, but not required to, adapt your own AT to use the same CAPTestAdapter.dll. Doing so will avoid having to produce two versions of the CAP, one for your own AT and one for ours.
BTW, we are using the "adapter pattern" here to reconcile differences between the expected interface (by AT) and the actual interface (in your CAP).

Final peer evaluation
This will be done *after* the final submission. Await more info.

2009-04-04T23:36:00.002+08:00

The remaining 10%...

Most teams have implemented several "must have" features by now. In almost all cases we checked, these features are neither "done" nor of "release quality". As you try to complete these features in the coming days (i.e., write automated system tests, upgrade AT to match new types of test cases, refactor and document code, debug and fix any bugs found, ...), you will realize the truth of this famous quote:

The first 90 percent of the code accounts for the first 90 percent of the development time...The remaining 10 percent of the code accounts for the other 90 percent of the development time. -- Tom Cargill (source)

The lesson here is when you feel the feature is almost done, you are in fact only half way there. This is especially so if you are not doing TDD (huh? what's TDD?).

BTW, didn't we realize during our earlier system testing of CAP1.0 that we find more bugs when the developer is not the same as tester? Are you applying this knowledge to the project now? In other words, is a feature written by you is also being system-tested by someone else in the team?

During the last 4 weeks of the module we focus on nudging you towards "best code/documentation you've ever written". This means you are going to hear a lot of negative comments and nit-picking from us about your code or the report. Do not get discouraged by this. As we've told you already, you are doing very well as compared to previous batches. Also note that we are not grading your iteration code or reports; we are giving feedback only. So all these negative comments will not lower your grade.

As you will read your couresemates' comments about your tool presentation, you will often feel that they have overlooked all the good things about your presentation and unfairly focused on things you did not do well. Do not feel discouraged by this. It is human nature to remember only the things you screwed up. We lecturers are reminded of this unfortunate truth every time we read your semester-end feedback about the course :-)

Keep up the good work. Just two more weeks. The end result will be worth all this hard work.

2009-03-20T17:44:00.003+08:00

Less work? Hardly!

Why so few new features?

Some of the CAP2.0 "must have" features are trivial. Some are not, but altogether they should not take the whole 4 weeks remaining. In a module that you routinely get more work than you want to do, why did we suddenly give you less work? Because we want you to...

Spend more time improving the existing code/documents. Writing more bad code will not help anyone.
Spend more time experimenting. Try different designs. Try different optimization strategies. Try different tools.
Spend more time reflecting on the project experience. This is more important than writing more code. Catch up with the reading list. Are all those tips given in the reading list applicable to your project? Which are not applicable and why? Think about these and bring those up for discussion in the forum or during consultations.
Spend more time testing. You still haven't caught all the bugs in CAP.

About CPS API

Don't forget to critically evaluate and improve the CPS API. Writing good API's is one important things we want you to learn. Compare the current API against the tips given here.

About bugs in CAP

Fix the bugs before you add new features (always!). Don't forget to maintain the Issue Tracker.

2009-03-19T14:53:00.003+08:00

Some links from the web...

Here's one:

The number of computer science majors enrolled at U.S. universities increased for the first time in six years, according to a Computing Research Association study being released Tuesday...
... the popularity of computer science majors among college freshmen and sophomores is because IT has better job prospects than other specialties, especially in light of the global economic downturn... Read more here: [Computer science major is cool again]

Here's another:

100 Interview Questions for Software Developers

2009-03-16T19:05:00.005+08:00

More info about the code review...

We have formulated this week's code review activity as A9.code-review. Please read the relevant section of the "Activities" page for more info. In particular, note which file will be reviewed and what do you have to do before coming to the code-review.

Just to remind you, TR15 too has been reserved for CS3215's use throughout the semester. SoC went to lot of trouble to shift other scheduled classes out of TR15 so that we can use it. It can accommodate more than 1 team at a time. Please use it for your project discussions as necessary.

Reading list in the "Resources" page has been updated with two additions.

We plan to release a list of "must have" CAP2.0 features shortly. This is so that we have a good basis for comparison to evaluate your final submission. You will have the freedom to implement some of the features you proposed as well.

Happy coding.

2009-03-08T20:26:00.003+08:00

After receiving the "intermediate grade"...

By now you all must have received an intermediate (team) grade. Here are several things to keep in mind when interpreting the result.

It is not significant as it sounds. Intermediate deliverable account for 35% of the final grade. The ones on which the intermediate grade is based will count for around 15% of the final grade.
Right now almost all teams are within a band of 2-3 marks (out of 15%). Considering your team can earn up to 75% more marks (remember, 10% is allocated to individual performance), its still anybody's game. Your B- can become an A+. really!
If you were expecting a better intermediate grade because you were working hard, so is everyone else. Work harder, and smarter!
If you were pleasantly surprised by a better-than-expected grade, it may be because we were rather generous with our grades (we gave 40% A's). Grading will become less generous later on, by necessity.

As said above, only 15% of your final (team) grade have been decided so far. Yes it is rather small and that is intentional. Our focus was not to evaluate you, but to coach you and bring you all up to speed. Our focus on evaluation will increase from now on. Our grading will be stricter as we move forward from here.

If anyone was alarmed that only 15% of the work has been completed so far, don't worry. We have completed around 50% of the average course workload. It's just that we put less emphasis on that 50% when grading.

Activities page has been updated. In particular,

Almost all future activities have been listed. This should help you to plan ahead. We may add 1-2 additional (small) activities if the need arises, but no major additions are expected.
We have added a "weight indicator" for each activity. This should help you to judge the relative importance of each activity. Actual work allocation is entirely up to you.

We have no items from our side to add to the agenda of this week's consultation. Please conduct it as a normal project discussion. As usual, we'll be there too.

In your ConTracker, there is a worksheet called "contribution statistics". If you are the person in charge of ConTracker, spend some time in getting this page in order (you might need some spreadsheet formula acrobatics for this one ;-)

There are some interesting topics being discussed in the class Google group. We instructors try not to butt in with our own ideas right away. This is to facilitate the free flow of ideas from you guys. Good forum participation can earn you credit, even if its bashing us, the course, or SE in general. :-)

We resume lectures this week. Hope to see you all on Thursday. Bug bash winners will be announced during the lecture.

2009-03-08T00:23:00.004+08:00

Activity levels in Google groups...

Here are the post counts for our Google groups. Kudos for those actively discussing the project using the Google group. Others, if you are using a different medium for your online discussions, do share with us those alternatives (in Project notes, "tools" section).

2009-03-01T18:28:00.005+08:00

After the recess ...

Welcome back folks. We hope you come back refreshed and recharged.

You'll find in your Google group some feedback about your NFQ testing. Some common things to note:

NFQ testing parameters to consider include size/complexity of BOOL/CQL, size of the result, and machine configuration. You may vary these parameters and try different combinations.
If you want to test how the system respond to one parameter (say, the number of variables), you should vary only that parameter while keeping other parameters fixed.
While the spec is rather vague about NFQ expectations, do not ignore it completely. For example, you should try to test the system on a "typical" machine (as specified by the spec) to see whether it meets the given performance requirement.
Define things like "typical" in more details. According to you, what is a typical BOOL program? You may also define what is a "small" program, a "mid-size" program, etc.
It was interesting to note that some teams reported loading/quering 100KLOC programs while others reported not being able to load more than 5KLOC. This may be due to different complexity levels in the BOOL program as well as different PC configurations.
Present at least some of the data collected in an appropriate form. Properly tabulation and visual representations such as charts and graphs can help to convey the results more effectively.
Give a summary of your observations and conclusions at the end. This should include info such as breaking points (e.g., at what BOOL size does the CAP becomes "unusable"?) and whether the CAP meets given NFQ targets.
Choose a good representative set of NFQ tests as benchmarks. You will repeat these later on to prove how you improved various NFQ of CAP.
Consider further automating NFQ when evolving AT and CAP. Wouldn't it be nice if we can generate an NFQ test report by simply running one command?

Week 7 consultation will include a 10 minute demo of your AT2 (come prepared). Also allocate another 10-15 minutes for us to give feedback on the design critique you submitted.

Activities page has been updated with further info about developer testing [A8.code] and the project proposal for a future semester [A10.proposal].

You might also find that activities we give are becoming more descriptive rather than prescriptive. That is, we tell you what needs to be achieved without giving much information on how to achieve them. While this may be frustrating to you, it is intentional. We want you to figure things out for yourself. Lean on your respective guru to show the way. Tools, techniques, and technologies change very fast in our field. The only way to survive is to learn how to explore and learn things by yourself.

As you already know, there will be no lecture this week. Use that slot to do project work together. We resume lectures in week 8.

We are also thinking of giving you an interim grade somewhere around week 7. This is just to let you know how well you are doing right now, based on the activities submitted so far. Let us know if you have objections to receiving such a grade.

2009-02-12T19:37:00.006+08:00

The second system effect, and other things ...

Thanks for submitting peer-evaluations. We'll process the data and let each one of you know what other teammates think about you. As mentioned before, everything in this module is liable for grading. Accordingly, we have added a VERY tiny amount of credit to all those who submitted peer-evaluations.

Bug bash will be held during your consultation next week.

We have a license key for Resharper (a Visual Studio plugin with enhanced editing/navigation etc.) if you are interested in using it. Usage is not compulsory. Same story for dotTrace (a profiling tool that can be used to find performance bottlenecks). We'll post the license keys in the GoogleGroup soon. Meanwhile, you can use the trial version. Thanks to JetBrains (who makes both these tools) for giving us academic licenses for free.

The vouchers I gave as rewards are a gift from Microsoft. They can be used to take MCSD C# certification exams (value is around S$125 I think). I have 3 more which I will give away sometime in the future. I'm also working on getting a mass discount for all of you to take the certification exam if you want. You'll know C# pretty well by the time you finish this course, so I think it is a smart move to get certified soon after. It will increase your job prospects a lot. Thanks Neng Giin (remember Neng Giin? he did the C# lecture) for getting us the vouchers.

Since we are building the 2nd version of both AT and CAP, here are two interesting quotes about the second version of a product.

Plan to throw one (implementation) away; you will, anyhow. -- Fred Brooks

Second system effect: The second system is the most dangerous one you could build --Fred Brooks

Some of you are creating additional GoogleDocs and sharing them with us. However, note that we only monitor the three Googledocs set up beforehand (ProjectNotes, ProjectTasks, IssueTracker). If you want something to be visible to us, try to put it in one of those three. It's OK if such content is not well formatted.

Reading list have been updated.

Lecture slides have been posted. Please don't hesitate to talk to us if you don't understand anything about testing etc. that we discussed during today's lecture.

Check IVLE gradebook for your A2.2 grade. Marking scheme is 32:A+, 31-28:A, 27-20:B, 19-15:C. Contact Chunqing if you have any concerns about the grade given to you.

Happy V day!

2009-02-12T15:00:00.002+08:00

Certain IT skills in demand despite economy

... workers with business-intelligence skills and expertise in C, C++, and C# programming should fare especially well in the weakened job market, according to a study.... [read more]

2009-02-09T13:11:00.002+08:00

AT2.0, PLs, etc.

Please go ahead and develop AT2.0 as you have proposed; we shall not declare a set of requirements for everyone to follow. However, we'll give feedback about your AT2.0 from time to time, and we might even throw a couple of additional requirements your way. So aim for a flexible and extensible design. Please also ensure that all core features are supported via command line as well. Focus more on the core features and less on additional bells-and-whistles.

SoC has done a software upgrade (in the middle of the semester!). Only PL3 and PL5 has VS2005 now (others have VS2008). We'll consider the PC configuration in those two labs as 'typical' when it comes to measuring CAP performance and scalability. The lab schedule can be viewed here. I'll check whether I can get the school to keep one of them open 24 hrs (no promises though).

No need to worry about A8.plan and A9.design-critique just yet. I'll give more info about these in this week's lecture.

Remember to learn your part of the CAP1.0 code well.

2009-02-06T00:27:00.002+08:00

Life after functional testing ...

Lecture slides are up in the lectures page. Please read up the slides I skipped during the lecture.

Both CAP1.0 documentation and code are now available in the resources page.

Future additions to the reading list (in the resources page) will not be in GoogleDoc format. Not many were adding comments to them anyway (many thanks to those who did). The version tracking of GoogleDocs is not top notch either. If you commented something in any of those GoogleDocs and want my response on it, please email me. Future reading assignments will be normal web pages. Please post your comments about them (if any) in the course google group.

Catch up with the reading list. We might test you on that during future consultations.

Thanks Chunqing for updating the SVN guide. Chunqing is the SVN guru of the teaching team. You can approach him with problems your own SVN guru cannot handle. SVN is a bit troublesome to use at times, but its value easily outweigh the overheads. BTW, we have read access to all your SVN repositories (Big brother is watching!).

I updated the supplementary notes with the objectives of our "on-trial" contribution tracking system. Please keep the discussion about the system going in the Google group.

2009-02-03T19:04:00.002+08:00

Study finds IT pay up in six areas, down elsewhere

Management/methodology/process skills pay leapt upward by 5.6 percent, while IT folks with database skills generated 2.9 percent more, and messaging and communications professionals garnered 2.9 percent more money during last year's fourth quarter.

Happy testing :-)

Some follow up information from the week 3 lecture.

A2.2 answers are available in CS3215 Supplementary notes . This should help to double check your understanding of the spec, which is vital to system testing.

IVLE forum is locked (you can still see the old posts though). Please use the Google group for class discussions.

Consultations during next week (Feb 2-6) are to be done in a project meeting fashion. Important things: there should be an agenda, there should be some one (meeting chair) to guide the meeting, and important decisions should be recorded (by scribe) and later circulated. We'll be there in an observer capacity.

Reading list for this week has been updated with the below.

Required:

Tips for planning and tracking the project (googledoc)
Tips for running a project meeting (googledoc)
Tips for using tools (googledoc)
Tips for tackling project risks (googledoc)
Section "Guidelines for tracking individual contribution" from CS3215 Supplementary notes (googledoc)

Optional:

This page (external link, read at your own risk :-) contains some jokes about software testing
20 Famous Software Disasters - think about these when you take a shortcut in a project task. Do you want to be the one who caused one of these? :-)

There are some justifiable requests to keep the schedule in Google calendar format as well. Please give us some more time to come up with a solution acceptable to all.

Happy testing!

2009-01-23T08:25:00.000+08:00

Follow up from week 2 lecture ...

Hello guys. Here are some follow up items from this week's lecture.

A2.2 deadline is 5pm today. Not 12 noon.

AutoTester (AT1.0) is already available from the AutoTester guide page. It comes with a Dummy CAP so you can start using it right away.

Complete A4 [system Test plan for CAP1.0] and email Damith to get your CAP1.0 executable. You have to finish testing CAP1.0 by Feb 5th 12 noon.

While you use AT1.0, lookout for its deficiencies and ways to improve it. This could help you later on when you have to propose a better AT2.0. For example, you can allocate an area in your 'Project Notes' google doc for everyone to add their comments about AT1.0. Ideas are better collected as they occur, since most are soon forgotten.

The last two lectures are available on webcast. Please contact avtech@comp.nus.edu.sg (and CC me) if you have trouble watching them. Selected slides from the lecture are available in the Lectures page in our website.

As I said before, cs3215jan2009 google group is preferred over IVLE forum for class discussions.

Reschedule your next consultation if it clashes with CNY. Use your next consultation to clarify all your doubts about the spec and A2.1 errors.

Get started with 'Project tasks' googledoc, but not necessarily in a very formal way. We'll talk more about this next lecture. In particular, don't forget to add all your past contribution to the document or they will be forgotten. We are especially interested to see how many hours you spent doing each task.

One of the objectives of A1 [team photo, name] was to get an early indication of team and teammate behavior (for you and for us). For example, if you look back at how you did A1, you might realize that some teammates participated eagerly in the exercise while some took 'whatever. just let's be done with it' attitude. Also, while some took an active role in generating ideas, some others were content in agreeing to teammates' ideas without contributing their own. From a team perspective, some teams did just enough to fulfill A1 requirements while others went the extra mile to pull off a noticeably better result. What you could do at this point is to reflect on what actually happened in your team and look for room to improve your team spirit and teamwork attitudes (individual and team). Relevant reading: Tips for working in the project team

Phew. I think that's the lot. Hopefully, this is the last announcement from us until the CNY holiday is over. Enjoy and come refreshed :-)

2009-01-21T00:26:00.000+08:00

About spies, spammers and some other things...

I guess you guys are busy rushing for the A2.1 deadline. Just to let you know, we will return you the corrected assignment during or before this week's lecture (that's fast feedback or what!). You can use this feedback to correct any mistakes in A2.2 which is due later. If you are now kicking yourself for having submitted the A2.2 ahead of the schedule, don't worry, just use the same link to resubmit.

DR3 (our consultation venue) is permanently reserved for CS3215. Feel free to kick out any non-CS3215 students from it if you want to use it. Just tell them it is booked for your meeting.

your participation in the Google group course (cs3215jan2009) can positively influence the 5% of the marks allocated for your conduct. It's advisable that you subscribe to it using your most active email and initiate and participate in SE and course related discussions with your coursemates there. Good forum ethics do not happen on their own - they have to learned and practiced. Besides, an important part of a software engineer's work life is keeping in touch with the rest of the community in the profession.

To repeat what I posted in the group, if you have an interest in taking part in open source software development and would like to attend OSSPAC conference ( Feb 16-18 Grand Hyatt Singapore), please email me. IBM has donated a very small number of passes to SoC and I
would like to recommend some of you to receive those. The actual value of the pass is $495. The importance of OSS is increasing rapidly, especially, given this economic climate. SoC wants to actively encourage students to take part in OSS activities.

I suggest one from each team get 'manager' permission for your team's google group (email Yinxing for this). That way, you can control who joins your group. Right now we are accepting all join requests (because we have no way to verify whether the request is from a team member or someone else). This makes your group vulnerable to spammers and industrial spies (from other teams ;-) There! that's the bit about spies that gives the curios title to the post.

2009-01-19T13:16:00.000+08:00

Google groups ready! And some other info...

Google groups are ready.


	cs3215jan2009team1

	cs3215jan2009team2

	cs3215jan2009team3

	cs3215jan2009team4

	cs3215jan2009team5

	cs3215jan2009team6

	cs3215jan2009team7

	cs3215jan2009team8

	cs3215jan2009team9

Please use them for your project related communications. You can post to the group (or reply to a post) by simply emailing to the group email address. Email Yinxing if you have any trouble with the accessing the group or one of you would like to have manager access to the group (so that you can manage group subscriptions on your own.

We will use the Google group cs3215jan2009 as the email group for course discussions. IVLE forum usage is discouraged. You can post to this group by emailing to cs3215jan2009@googlegroups.com (but you have to use the same email address that you used to subscribe to this group. Again, email Yinxing if you want your subscription changed).

Errata page has been updated. Thanks Hirman for noticing this error.

Please come to consultations on time (for the same reasons we should not arrive late for a project meeting if we were working in a company). The consultation will not start until all who are supposed to attend have arrived.

2009-01-18T13:49:00.000+08:00

Consultation schedule, Google groups etc.

Consultations schedule is now available. Consultations start from Monday 19th. The same page gives your team number and your supervisor.

You may want to do A2.1 before your consultation this week. That way, you can clarify any doubts during the consultation. Feel free to set up additional meeting with your supervisor to clarify your CQL/BOOL doubts, especially, if your consultation falls after the submission deadline. If your main supervisor is unavailable during the time window you are free, you can also approach me (your co-supervisor). Feel free to email too. Note that you are not allowed to show your answers and ask "is this answer correct?" or anything of the sort. But you can ask general questions like "Does the 'Affect(n1,n2)' hold if n1 is in a while loop and n2 is ....".

No need to register for tutorials using CORS.

We are in the process of creating Google groups for each project team and another one for the whole class. You'll be notified of the URL soon. We'll use your Google IDs when we add you to those groups. Contact Yinxing if you want these subscriptions changes later on.

We did not cover Abstract Syntax Trees in the last lecture. If you need any help on ASTs, please ask us during this week's consultation. I suppose you already know CFGs from CS2103. Again, please ask for help if you need any. Sections 6.3.1 and 6.3.2 of the CAP1.0 spec too covers some AST and CFG basics.

[Team 1 (bearing the team name "Team 13" - I hope this curious team name does not mean you plan to copy stuff from a Team 13 from a previous semester ;-), since your time slot is this Monday morning (this may be a bit short notice for you), you may want to reschedule yours for this week. If you want to stick with the given time slot, that's also fine. Do let us know which do you prefer.]

2009-01-15T18:33:00.000+08:00

After the introductory lecture (phew)...

It was nice to see (most of) you all there at the lecture. I hope what I said about what lies ahead didn't scare you too much. The project may be scary at first, but we will get there eventually. Don't worry.

I asked the AV team to do a Webcast just for this week, so that folks yet to arrive in Singapore wouldn't miss the lecture. As luck would have it, the AV team messed up the job it seems. I'll let you know if they managed to salvage anything from the recording.

There is one more team to sign up. For the time being we are going to proceed without them. We are processing the data now. We'll send the consultation schedule soon.

A few of you are yet to submit your info using the online form I sent earlier. Do this ASAP or you will not be able to access the reading material we share with the class.

Talking about reading materials, we added the following to the reading list (the whole list is in the resources page).

[Readings for week 2]
Required:

Tips for working in the project team (googledoc)
Tips for working with the supervisor (googledoc)

Optional:

Testing (A chapter from an upcoming SE book) (googledoc) - Read this if you want to refresh your knowledge about testing before the next lecture. Especially, if you "blur" on the following terms: white/black/gray-box testing, reactive testing, basis path testing, regression testing, boundary value analysis, and equivalence classes.

Our next big job is to test CAP1.0. Therefore, our next lecture is mainly about "testing". Come prepared with the basic knowledge of testing beefed up. The above link should help you on this regard. Don't forget; the "big brother camera" will be on during the lecture.

A1-A3 are now available in the assignments page. We'll send you the link to your team's "Project notes" googledoc in which you will be posting your team photo. Meanwhile, I attach (above) a fun team photo from a previous semesters. I hope yours is much funnier :-D.

2009-01-13T00:04:00.000+08:00

Guest lecture, and some paperwork to do

As you already know, on this Tuesday we have the guest lecture "Introduction to C# and Visual Studio 2005" by Mr Neng Giin from Microsoft Singapore. It's at LT34, 6-8pm. Lecture slides are already up in the website. With his kind help, we have added another C# link A Brief Introduction to Visual Studio 2005 to the resources page. Highlights of the lecture:

A quick overview about setup of VS studio 2005
Demo 1: Hello World
Demo 2: Internet Browser in 5 mins (this i gotta see!)
Demo 3: Notepad in 5 mins

You will receive in your NUSNET email links to two online forms to fill. Yup, more forms to fill :-) One is the team registration form to be filled by one person per team (deadline: 15th 5pm). The other is to collect some data about yourself, to be submitted be each of you (deadline: 14th 5pm).

2009-01-04T09:42:00.000+08:00

Ready to hit the ground running?

Sorry about the cliché in the title. We have a lot of grounds to cover in this module and we do indeed have to hit the ground running at the beginning of the module. I hope you are ready :-) Here are some things you could do while waiting for the first lecture (on 15th Jan, 1200-1400 LT15, attendance compulsory):

Know what you are getting into: Take a look at the course overview and how to prepare for the course. Some of you may be interested in what past students had to say about the course. The course FAQ is worthy of a skim through too.
Start learning C# and Visual Studio 2005. We plan to have an optional "An Introduction to C# and Visual Studio" lecture on Tues 1800-2000 (LT34, SOC1 - not our regular LT). But hey, no need to wait till then; you can start on your own right now. Our resources page could be of use here. Warning: we use an (individual) assignment to test your C# knowledge very early in the course.
This semester, you will be working on an existing product (that's right, you won't be developing something from scratch) called Code Analyzer Plugin (CAP). Start reading the CAP1.0 specification as soon as possible. (use the SOC unix id/password to access the link). In particular, you should learn BOOL and CQL well (What the h*** is BOOL, you ask? Read they spec to find out). You may skip section 6 until later. We will use an assignment to test your BOOL and CQL knowledge very early in the course.
If you are the really adventurous type, you can start learning some of the other tools we'll be using in the course.
While you are doing all this, may we suggest you start looking for a team to join? You can use the IVLE forum to get in touch with others looking for teams or team members.

2009-01-04T00:34:00.000+08:00

If you are an early starter...

Language: CS3215 in this semester will be done using C#
Grading: Unlike previous semesters, the whole team will not be given the same grade. You will be given an individual grade based on your performance in individual assignments, your team's achievements, your contribution towards the team's achievements, and your conduct during the course. More information about the grading policy will be given as the course progresses.
Project: The nature of the project will be drastically different from previous semesters
Team: The team size is fixed at 6. You are expected to form a team by 15th Jan. If you cannot find a team to join, we'll help you form a team during the lecture on Jan 15th.
The lecture on Jan 15th is compulsory. Attendance will be taken. Please note that lecture attendance is an essential part of the course. Please do not schedule any other activity during the lecture time slot, throughout the whole semester.
Workload: Please note that this is an 8-MC module, having an equivalent workload of 2 regular modules. You are strongly advised to take no more than 3 other modules with it. That is, the total modular credits you enroll for should not be more than 20.
Tools: Tentative list of tools that will be used in the course: VisualStudio2005, SubVersion, NUnit, ReSharper, DotTrace, GoogleDocs, GoogleSpreadsheets. While the course will provide basic guidance in using these tools, you are welcome to start early and get familiarized with the tools yourself