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Course Description
Course Overview
Textbooks
Policies
Weekly Schedule
Getting
a Computer Account
Academic Integrity Policy
PSU Student Code of Conduct
Class
Mailing List
- Pharo website
- download Pharo
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- Squeak: Downloads and information
- goodies directory
- Preventing the Spread of 'flu
- flu.gov website for higher edu
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Fall Quarter 2009
starting on Wednesday 30th September and ending with the final exam on Monday 7th December
Monday and Wednesday, 16:40–18:30 in Cramer Hall Room 71
- Office Hours:
- Tuesday 14:00–15:30
Wednesday 13:00–14:30,
or by appointment.
Prerequisites
No familiarity with object-oriented programming is assumed; students who have expereince with Java or C++ should be prepared to unlearn some of what they think they know. Prior experience with Smalltalk is not required. The class assumes a working knowledge of discrete mathematics and machine organization — the fundamentals of instruction coding and data representation in the computer's memory. (Students who have completed PSU CS 310 and CS 340 will be well prepared)
Course
Description
The objective of this course is to teach students to program well in an object-oriented style. The focus is more on object-oriented design and programming than on a particular language and its niceties. The course will use the Pharo dialect of the Smalltalk language because Smalltalk is very simple and allows the programmer to
manipulate objects directly. Using Smalltalk permits the course to be
focussed on concepts rather than on navigating the intricacies of a
language definition. Samples of other languages, such as Ruby and Java,
may be included.
Topics covered will include responsibility-driven design,
test-driven development, refactoring, code reading, reuse,
parameterization, inheritance and programming patterns.
Specific Learning Objectives
On completion of this course, students should be able to
- Design a group of collaborating objects to implement a
given set of requirements;
- Assign the responsibilities for the actions implied by the
requirements to the appropriate objects;
- Partition these responsibilities into appropriately named methods;
- Write definitions for the classes that can be used to
generate these objects;
- Deduce the data necessary to implement the requirements,
and partition that data among the objects
- Define appropriate instance variables to store these data;
- Create abstract superclasses in order to share common code,
- Arrange the concrete and abstract classes in an appropriate
hierarchy,
- Write tests for methods
- Explore existing classes and methods using the Smalltalk
programming environment;
- Read, write, edit, test, share and debug Smalltalk code using the development tools
- Create packages and change sets containing their programs
and export them from the Smalltalk system.
Policies
Attendance
I recommend that you come to class, that you participate actively, and that you take notes. The act of taking notes (even if you never look at them again) is a powerful learning aid. I will generally make any visual aids, code samples, etc. that I used in class available on the web, but these are not a substitute for being in class and taking notes. If you do have to miss a class, say because of illness or work-related travel, you are responsible for getting notes and finding out what went on in class from another student.
What about the 'flu?
It is likely that there will be an epidemic of HNNI 'flu this fall or winter. To learn more, visit this government website. How does this affect this class? Students should note the folowing:
- There is a link in the margin on preveting the spread of 'flu. Read it!
- Students will not be penalized for absences caused by illness. You will be given a chance to make up missed assignments.
- I won't require a note from a phsician as evidence that you are sick.
- PSU-wide policy and information can be found at the Student Health and Counseling Website.
- Don't come to class if you are feeling sick. Stay home until you have been free of fever for 24 hours. If I see a student in class exhibiting the symptoms of the 'flu, I will require them to leave the classroom.
- All of the assignments will be posted on the class website. Homework can be tunred n electronically. I am willing to conduct "office hours" over the phone, on skype, and by using VNC screen-sharing.
- I might get sick too. I'll do my best to have a TA or another Professor cover for me if that happens.
- Leave as much space between yourselves as possible when sitting in the classroom. I won't be passing out papers that will need to be handed from one student to the next; print your own copies.
Reading Assignments
Reading listed in the syllabus for each week should be completed before coming to class. I may check on the completion of reading assignments by various means: oral or written quizzes in class, written summaries, discussion (web-based or in class), etc. Anything in a reading assignment is fair game for an exam question.
Programming Assignments
Print-outs of your assignment submissions are due at the start of class. On-line submissions are due before the start of class.
Regrading
I do sometimes make mistakes. If you believe that I have not graded your assignment according to the published grading scheme, please let me know in writing (email counts as writing!) within 1 week of the assignment being returned to you. Be specific as to why you think that my grading is inconsistent. I will then re-grade the whole assignment; the second grading will stand, whether it is higher or lower than the original grading.
Disabilities
If you are a student with a disability in need of academic accommodations, you should first register with the Disability Resource Center, and then notify the instructor to arrange for support services.
Makeup Exams
If you have a medical or a family emergency and must miss an exam, let me know, if at all possible before the exam, and I will work with you to find an alternative. Other reasons for absence such as scheduled travel are not emergencies and are not cause for a make-up.
Passing the Course
Every assignment in the course is connected to a learning objective. It is therefore important that you make an honest attempt to complete them all. A score of less than 30% on any assignment indicates that you have not met this condition, and is sufficient cause for failing the course. That means an F, at the discretion of the instructor.
Academic Integrity
Students are at university for two reasons: to learn stuff,
and to gain a credential. Because the credential is important to many
of our students, part of my role as a professor is to make sure that it
has value. This means ensuring that the degree is awarded only to those
students who have mastered the material in my course.
I have every sympathy for those who have difficulty with the
material and seek the assistance of the instructor, the TA or their
fellow students. I have no sympathy at all for those who decide that
the fastest way to a degree is to cheat. I have been responsible for
having cheating students dismissed from the university in the past, and
I will not hesitate to seek to have cheaters dismissed in the future.
The most common form of academic dishonesty — cheating — is
representing the work of others as your own. In all written material,
it is expected that you will use others' work, but when you do so it
must be in a way that makes it absolutely clear that someone else's
work is being cited, and who is the original author. If you reproduce
someone else's work in a way that makes it appear to be yours, you are
guilty of plagiarism, in other words, of cheating.
Cheating on an assignment or exam will result in an
automatic zero grade for that piece of work, and the initiation of
disciplinary action at the University level.
Cheating and collaboration
I encourage collaboration on certain assignments; I will not
tolerate cheating. Where is the line between these activities?
First, if an assignment is explicitly set up as a team
assignment, you are of course allowed — indeed, required — to
collaborate with the members of your team. In this case I will
generally require only one completed piece of work to be turned in from
the team as a whole.
For individual assignments, I encourage you to talk
about the problem with your fellow students. During such discussion,
you may even write something, perhaps the code of a critical
method, as a group. If you do this, there is a danger that you might
reproduce that group work as if it were your own. To guard against this
danger, do the following: after the group session, destroy all the
notes and code fragments that you may have brought away with you. Then
go and do something else for an hour or two: go for a walk or a bike
ride, play your favorite sport, go to the gym: do something to flush
your short-term memory. Then sit down with a blank sheet of paper or a
blank workspace and start work on your own solution. If you have a
photographic memory or otherwise won't be able to forget what you have
seen someone else write, then don't participate in collaborative
problem-solving sessions.
If I see the same code or writing assignment from two or more
students I will take this as evidence that these guidelines have been
ignored, and will assign a grade of zero to all of the students
involved.
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