JHU / CS / 600.120: Intermediate Programming

Schedule (Tentative!)

Stuff listed in bold indicates a due date of some sort, attached to a grade item that will influence your final grade. See Assessment for more details.
Assignments are due on the day listed before lecture! Tasks that don't have a more specific time attached are due before midnight that day!

Week 1: Introduction and Overview (January 28 – February 3)

Lecture:

Monday: Welcome to Intermediate Programming!
Wednesday: Values, Types, Variables, Expressions
Friday: Conditionals, Repetitions; Using indent to clean up

Section:

Tuesday: A Crash Course in Unix
Thursday: A Crash Course in Unix

Reading:

Required: K&R 1: A Tutorial Introduction; 2: Types, Operators, and Expressions; 3: Control Flow
Optional: Dennis M. Ritchie: The Development of the C Language

Tasks:

Monday: Grab Assignment 1 and get started!
Wednesday: Introduce yourself on the course mailing list!

Week 2: Functions, Compilation, and Arrays (February 4 – February 10)

Lecture:

Monday: Makefiles, Hacking simple cat and wc clones, Functions
Wednesday: Using ctags in vi, Using cscope, Independent Compilation, More on Makefiles, Include Files
Friday: Arrays, Hacking a stack and an RPN Calculator

Section:

Tuesday: Hacking a simple grep clone
Thursday: Hacking a simple grep clone

Reading:

Required: K&R 4: Functions and Program Structure; 5: Pointers and Arrays
Optional: Rob Pike: Notes on Programming in C

Tasks:

Monday: Hand in Assignment 1 and relax!
Monday: Grab Assignment 2 and get started!
Wednesday: Once you graduate, is it more likely that you will write shiny new code or fix crusty old code? In either case, will you spend more time reading code or more time writing code? Do you know how many lines of code decent developers write in a day? What does all this mean for your education? Discuss these issues on the course mailing list; if you use sources (Google may be helpful to figure some things out) make sure you cite them properly.

Week 3: Pointers, Memory, Input, and Output (February 11 – February 17)

Lecture:

Monday: Introduction to Pointers, The sizeof operator
Wednesday: More on Pointers, How to use strtol() correctly, Basics of Memory Allocation (malloc() and free())
Friday: Using splint for static checking, Input and Output, Files and Stuff, How cool is snprintf(), eh?

Section:

Tuesday: Hacking a simple Caesar Cipher
Thursday: Hacking a simple Caesar Cipher

Reading:

Required: K&R 5: Pointers and Arrays; 7: Input and Output
Optional: Peter Hosey: Everything you need to know about pointers in C

Tasks:

Monday: Hand in Assignment 2 and relax!
Monday: Grab Assignment 3 and get started!
Wednesday: Accessing an array outside its bounds is an unchecked error in C, meaning you'll need some "luck" to notice that anything is wrong. In Java, on the other hand, all array accesses are checked: If you're out of bounds you'll get an exception thrown at you. Take and defend a position regarding this issue on the course mailing list; discuss.

Week 4: Structs, Putting it all together... (February 18 – February 24)

Lecture:

Monday: Structures, Hierarchical Abstraction
Wednesday: Hacking linked lists, more on memory allocation (including memory leaks and dangling pointers)
Friday: Hacking a stack abstraction (aka Modularity in C, aka The Revenge of Java)

Section:

Tuesday: Using gdb, Consultations for Assignment 4
Thursday: Using gdb, Consultations for Assignment 4

Reading:

Required: K&R 6: Structures; 7: Input and Output
Optional: Rob Pike, Brian W. Kernighan: Program Design in the UNIX environment

Tasks:

Monday: Hand in Assignment 3 and relax!
Monday: Grab Assignment 4 and get started!
Wednesday: In most programming languages, strings are stored as sequences (arrays) of bytes (at least if we forget about Unicode for the time being). However, different languages employ different techniques for the length of a string. In C, the end of a string is marked with a special 0 byte. In many Pascal implementations, the first byte of a string indicates its length. What are the advantages and disadvantages of these string representations? Discuss!

Week 5: Function Pointers & Other Oddities (February 25 – March 2)

Lecture:

Monday: Function Pointers, Using qsort(3) and bsearch(3)
Wednesday: Enumerations, Preprocessor Macros, Variable Length Argument Lists
Friday: Faking Objects, aka "Sticking it to Java!" :-)

Section:

Tuesday: Using valgrind, Consultations for Assignment 5
Thursday: Using valgrind, Consultations for Assignment 5

Reading:

Required: Review the K&R book (all of it!) for Midterm 1

Tasks:

Monday: Hand in Assignment 4 and relax!
Monday: Grab Assignment 5 and get started!

Week 6: Testing & Performance, Introduction to C++ (March 3 – March 9)

Lecture:

Monday: Basics of Testing (unit vs. system testing, testing automation, black box vs. white box testing); Using gcov for coverage analysis; Using gcov to identify "hot spots" for performance evaluation and tuning; Using time(1) for performance evaluation; Array index interchange example
Wednesday: Basics of Performance Analysis (don't guess: measure, reliable measurements: averaging and load considerations); Static Cost Models; Using time(3) and gprof for performance evaluation
Friday: Hacking "Hello World!" in C++, Namespaces, Input and Output using std::cin and std::cout, String handling using std::string, Structs and Classes, Public and Private members, Using new and delete to allocate/free objects

Section:

Tuesday: Using Subversion, Consultations for Assignment 6
Thursday: Using Subversion, Consultations for Assignment 6

Reading:

Required: Review the K&R book (all of it!) for Midterm 1; K&M 0: Getting started, 1: Working with strings
Recommended: Software Testing, Performance Analysis, Version Control with Subversion
Optional: Test-Driven Development, Performance Tuning

Tasks:

Monday: Hand in Assignment 5 and relax!
Monday: Grab Assignment 6 and get started!
Friday: Remember the spam filter bmf-0.9.4.tar.gz you studied for Assignment 2? Take a look at the program again, briefly of course so as not to distract you too much from the actual assignment for the week. How did you feel about it then? How do you feel about it now? Can you actually comprehend code you didn't have a clue about earlier? Do you think it's a "good" program in terms of style, error checking, etc? Anything that comes to mind when you look at it again is fair game for posting to the discussion list... :-)

Week 7: Introduction to C++, Midterm 1 (March 10 – March 16)

I am leaving early Wednesday morning for SIGCSE 2008 to learn more about teaching. Sorry I'll miss the exam, but I believe you'll be in capable hands... :-)

Lecture:

Monday: Hacking a counter class; constructors; references vs. pointers; destructors; hacking an array class; const for methods; intro to operators and overloading;
Wednesday: Review for Midterm 1 (Joseph Vidalis)
Friday: Midterm 1 (Joseph Vidalis)

Section:

Tuesday: Hacking a stack class (Joseph Vidalis)
Thursday: This one didn't happen! :-/ Hacking a stack class (Joseph Vidalis)

Reading:

Required: K&M 2: Looping and counting, 3: Working with batches of data, 4: Organizing programs and data
Optional: Bjarne Stroustrup: A History of C++: 1979-1991, 1993.

Tasks:

Wednesday: Hand in Assignment 6 and relax!
Friday: From what you have seen and read about C++ so far, explain one significant difference between C++ and Java (the language you all should know anyway) on the discussion list. You must come up with a new point, you can't just agree to a point someone else is making. Alternatively you can refute (with examples and citing sources) a difference that someone else claims exists. Enjoy!

Week 8: Spring Break! (March 17 – March 23)

Have fun! :-)

Week 9: More C++ (March 24 – March 30)

Lecture:

Monday: Hacking a stack class (to make up for the lab some missed in Week 7); independent compilation of classes (and why we can't hide data members completely); copy constructors and assignment operators
Wednesday: Hacking a rational class for rational numbers; more on overloading (toward making objects look like basic values); friend functions; overloading of << for output
Friday: Introduction to Templates (writing generic functions and classes); introduction to the STL; using the std::vector container class and iterators; using simple STL algorithms

Section:

Tuesday: Consultations for Assignment 7
Thursday: Consultations for Assignment 7

Reading:

Required: K&M 5: Using sequential containers, 6: Using library algorithms, 8: Writing generic functions

Tasks:

Monday: Grab Assignment 7 and get started!

Week 10: Even More C++ (March 31 – April 6)

Lecture:

Monday: Introduction to Inheritance and (Subtype) Polymorphism; public and private inheritance; virtual member functions and destructors; pure virtual member functions (abstract methods in Java)
Wednesday: More on Inheritance: how it's implemented, why dynamic binding works only for pointers and references; Casting in C++: old-style vs. new-style, static_cast vs. dynamic_cast; Using std::map
Friday: TBD; (More overloading; writing automatic conversions, back and forth; explicit constructors)

Section:

Tuesday: Consultations for Assignment 8
Thursday: Consultations for Assignment 8

Reading:

Required: K&M 7: Using associative containers, 9: Defining new types
Optional: Scott Myers: The little endl that couldn't, C++ Report, November 1995.

Tasks:

Monday: Hand in Assignment 7 and relax!
Monday: Grab Assignment 8 and get started!
Friday: Post your idea for a final project in the course. Be sure to describe it in enough detail for others to understand what you're suggesting. Don't just say "MapQuest" for example, explain with a few sentences what the system you'd like to build would do for users. Don't just say "some game" but give details instead, maybe pointing to existing games and telling us what would be different for your version. Note that there's no guarantee that we'll pick from your suggestions, but if something truly fascinating comes along, we just might... :-)

Week 11: Teams and Objects (April 7 – April 13)

Lecture:

Monday: Software Development in Teams; Software Engineering and Software Process Models
Wednesday: Introduction to Object-Oriented Design (OOD) and the Unified Modeling Language (UML); File System Example; Corporate Management Example; The Composite Design Pattern
Friday: Graphics Editor Example for Composite; Observer (Publish-Subscribe) Patter; Recursive Observer Pattern; Strategy and Template Method Patterns

Section:

Tuesday: Consultations for Assignment 9
Thursday: Consultations for Assignment 9

Reading:

Required: K&M 10: Managing memory and low-level data structures, 11: Defining abstract data types, 12: Making class objects act like values
Optional: The Subversion Book

Tasks:

Monday: Hand in Assignment 8 and relax!
Monday: Grab Assignment 9 and get started!
Tuesday: Email us your team registration for the final project. Include the names and email addresses of all three team members! Be sure to cc all team members! And pick a decent name for your team, otherwise we'll pick one for you... :-)

Week 12: More Object-Oriented Design (April 14 – April 20)

Lecture:

Monday: Case Study: Interactive Fiction
Wednesday: Interactive Case Study: Library System (your designs)
Friday: Midterm 2

Section:

Tuesday: Consultations for Assignment 10
Thursday: Consultations for Assignment 10

Reading:

Required: K&M 13: Using polymorphism and dynamic binding, 14: Managing memory (almost) automatically, 15: Revisiting character pictures, 16: Where do we go from here?

Tasks:

Monday: Hand in Assignment 9 and relax!
Monday: Grab Assignment 10 and get started!

Week 13: Even more Object-Oriented Design (April 21 – April 27)

Lecture:

Monday: Interactive Case Studies: Email System, Navigation System, Exercise Bike, University System (your designs)
Wednesday: Case Study: Email System; Polymorphism, Rectangles, and Squares: Dangers and Possibilities :-)
Friday: TBD

Section:

Tuesday: Consultations for Assignment 11
Thursday: Consultations for Assignment 11

Reading:

Required: Nothing
Optional: Whatever you think helps...

Tasks:

Monday: Hand in Assignment 10 and relax!
Monday: Grab Assignment 11 and get started!

Week 14: Review and Outlook (April 28 – May 2)

Lecture:

Monday: Almost All of Python in 45 Minutes
Wednesday: Stump The Chump (Q&A session with candy)
Friday: Final Presentations

Section:

Tuesday: Q&A
Thursday: Q&A

Reading:

Required: Nothing
Optional: Whatever you think helps...

Tasks:

Monday: Hand in Assignment 11 and relax a lot! :-)