Harvey Mudd College
Computer Science

CS121: Software Development

Spring 2010

Lecture:

M&W 1:15-2:30, LAC

Professor:

Z Sweedyk, 1249 Olin, x78360

Mail: z@cs.hmc.edu

Office hours: M&W 2:45-4:00

Course mailing list:

cs-121-l@hmc.edu

Course trac:

TBA

Tutors/Graders:

Jessica Blevins
Keith Ingram
Singer Ma

What This Course Is About

The objective of this course is to introduce you to the theory and practice of software design and development. You will study the stages of development from requirements specification and analysis through design, implementation, and testing. You will study ways to organize and manage these stages. You will also learn principles of software design including design patterns and anti-patterns. You will apply these principles and techniques in the design and development of an educational computer game.

We focus on games for several reasons. Games are fun projects and most students have a strong sense of what constitutes a good product. More importantly, games require solutions to a broad range of problems that rarely show up in a single software project. Games are real-time systems with stringent performance constraints. They require good user interface design. They typically use computer graphics and sound. Games can draw on other areas of computer science as well, such as artificial intelligence, computer networking, and computer art. And they often involve the modeling and simulation of physical systems, which requires concepts from mathematics, engineering, and physics.

Grades

Your grade will depend on your semester-long design/development project as well as two exams, daily quizes, and class participation:

Game project	65%
Midterm exam	10%
Final exam	10%
Daily quizzes	10%
Class participation	5%

Textbooks

Code Complete by McConnell

Student projects

Globe Trotter: Beta,User test

Hectare: Beta,User test

Attack of the Hittites: Beta, User test

Energy Empire: Beta, User test

Schedule

Date	Topic	Readings due	Assignment due	Links
Wed 1-20	Introduction			Project: Phase I Intro Questinnaire
Mon 1-25	Requirements	MC 3.1-3.4,20.1 Wiegers: Requirement Traps Ambler: BRUF Trac Guide: wiki, tickets Keller: Goal breakdown	High Concept Competitive Analysis Management Plan trac set up
Wed 1-27	Customer Elicitation		Prep for customer elicitation
Mon 2-1	Requirements modeling	Wiegers: Listening to Customer's Voices Cockburn:Use Cases, 10 years later Bittner: Use cases, storyboards, and prototypes	Customer Elicitation Report Technology Assessment	PacMan use cases
Wed 2-3	Design Practice	McConnell 5.1,5.4-5.5,20.2, 21 Youtube: Will Wright (13:00-30:00) UML Tutorial		UMLet: UML tool
Mon 2-8	Reviews Design I	McConnell 5.2-5.3	Game Design Document
Wed 2-10	Design II	Gabler: How to Prototype a Game in under 7 days
Mon 2-15	Design III	Software design principles Riel: Design Heuristics Kampe: Postmortems	Prototype Final Proposal
Wed 2-17	Design Patterns		Postmortem	Project: Phase II
Mon 2-22	UI	usability.net: User Centered Design Bay: Designing games that don't suck Glinert: Upping your games usability
Wed 2-24	Component Design Architectural Review	McConnell 6, 34.4 Eiffel: Design by contract
Mon 3-1	Testing	Design Review submission
Wed 3-3	Design Review	McConnell 19.6, 22 wikipedia:software testing Kampe: S/W testing Thompson: Halo3 testing
Mon 3-8	UI Test
Wed 3-10	UI Test			Midterm Exam
Mon 3-17	Spring break
Wed 3-19	Spring break
Mon 3-22	Midterm (take home)
Wed 3-24	Giving a good presentation
Mon 3-29	Class Presentations		Alpha Release
Wed 3-31	Game evaluations			Project: Phase III Hectare alpha Hectare presentation part 1 Hectare presentation part 1 Hittites alpha Hittites presentation Globetrotter alpha Globetrotter presentation Energy Empire alpha Energy Empire presentation
Mon 4-5	Test plan implementation/review
Wed 4-7	Code review			Feedback evaluation
Mon 4-12	Test plan/tracking review
Wed 4-14	Project estimation
Mon 4-19	Fun factor
Wed 4-21	Code review prep
Mon 4-26	Code review 1
Wed 4-28	Code review 2