CPS 108: Course Information

Spring 1999

Professor: Robert C. Duvall

Office: LSRC D228
Office Hours: To be Announced (or any time for quick questions)
Email: rcd@cs.duke.edu
Phone: 660-6567

UTAs

Office: LSRC D240 (yurt)
Office Hours:

Phone: 660-6526

Meeting Time

CPS 108.1: MWF 2:20pm-3:10 in LSRC room B101 (Love Auditorium)

Overview

This is a course in object-oriented programming and design. It is based on working in teams of two to five people; however, there are several individual assignments too. Among the main goals you should have, and that I have for those in the course, is to learn both low-level and high-level idioms and patterns of programming that will make you wonderful, intelligent programmers and designers. The course is not organized so that you will be become 3 a.m. Java hackers, but that is a reality that may happen.

If you don't already know C++, this probably is not the right course to learn that language, although dedicated participants may be able to. By the end of the course you should expect to have written several 500-1000 line programs, a few 1000-3000 line programs, and one 5000+ line program. Of course using lines of code (loc) as a programming metric is not the best thing to do, but it conveys a sense of the scale of the programming you will do. You will become more proficient at object-oriented design and programming and your programs will consist of hundreds of classes by the end of the semester.

You will need to do a lot of reading and a lot of debugging outside of lecture.

Required Books

You will use several books as well as online readings in the course. In addition to those you can buy at the Duke textbook store, you can find more useful resources at the Gothic bookstore, Barnes and Noble at New Hope Commons, or online from Amazon books. A few that we recommend are listed here.

Effective C++ Second Edition: 50 Specific Ways to Improve Your Programs and Designs by Scott Meyers, Addison-Wesley
More Effective C++: 35 New Ways to Improve Your Programs and Designs by Scott Meyers, Addison-Wesley
Object-Oriented Design Heuristics by Arthur J. Riel, Addison-Wesley

In general you should read the text in order to be prepared to ask and answer questions in class. If you have looked at material before it is discussed in class you will get much more out of the class discussion. Although time will be given at the beginning of lecture for you to ask questions about the reading, the majority of the lecture will be an extension of the reading, not a summary.

Computing

All programming projects should compile and execute on the acpub Sun ULTRA-SparcStations. Projects may be developed on other platforms (e.g., you personal computer), but the final version must compile and execute on the SparcStations.

Click here for a list of the public clusters available on campus. You may work in any of these clusters; however, only the clusters in Teer 106 and Carr 125 will be staffed by student consultants. Student consultants should be on duty Sunday through Friday evenings. Click here for the current schedule.

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