Big Java, 4th edition, by Cay Horstmann
Paperback: 1132 pages
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2009
ISBN: 978-0-470-50948-7
Links: Companion Site· Source code· Errata
The formal prerequisite is: CSSE 120 – Introduction to Software Development.
The main things you should bring into this course include:
Object-oriented programming concepts, including the use of inheritance, interfaces, polymorphism, abstract data types, and encapsulation to enable software reuse and assist in software maintenance. Recursion, GUIs and event handing. Use of common object-based data structures, including stacks, queues, lists, trees, sets, maps, and hash tables. Space/time efficiency analysis. Testing. Introduction to UML.
Students who successfully complete this course should be able to:
Curt Clifton – Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Software Engineering
| Email: | clifton@rose-hulman.edu |
| Office phone: | (812) 877-8593 |
| Office address: | Moench F-222 |
| Home page: | http://www.rose-hulman.edu/~clifton |
| Office hours: | I strive to be in my office Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday from 7:30 a.m. until 4:30 p.m. I will be off campus most Wednesday's this term, but should have email access. Please stop by whenever. If my door is shut, just knock. My schedule is available from my home page. |
Delvin Defoe – Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Software Engineering
| Email: | defoe@rose-hulman.edu |
| Office phone: | (812) 877-8815 |
| Office address: | Moench F-214 |
| Home page: | http://www.rose-hulman.edu/~defoe |
| Office hours: | I strive to be in my office every day from 9 a.m. until 5 p.m. unless I’m in class or a meeting. Please stop by whenever. If my door is shut, just knock. My schedule is available from my home page |
Nicholas Kamper, kampernj <at> rose-hulman <dot> edu
Susan Cisneros, cisnerss <at> rose-hulman <dot> edu
Jeremy Tramm, trammjn <at> rose-hulman <dot> edu
Cassandra Cox, coxcm <at> rose-hulman <dot> edu
Arda Tugay, tugayac <at> rose-hulman <dot> edu
Kurtis Zimmerman, zimmerka <at> rose-hulman <dot> edu
Steven Moyes, moyessa <at> rose-hulman <dot> edu
If you send mail to csse220-staff@rose-hulman.edu, it will go to all instructors and student assistants for the course. You are more likely to get a quick answer by sending to this address than to any of us individually.
The CSSE lab, F-217, is staffed to assist students taking courses in the CSSE Fundamentals sequence, including 220. A detailed schedule of times when assistants should be available is posted.
Besides the instructors and assistants, other students in the course can often be a great source of help. And they will learn more if they explain things to you.
Don’t try to be the Lone Ranger in this course, especially if you do not find the course easy. If you find that you have worked on something for 30 minutes without making any progress, it’s probably time to seek help! Software development is a team sport. The best programmers know that a fresh set of eyes can often spot a problem right away.
Big Java, 4th edition, by Cay Horstmann
Paperback: 1132 pages
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2009
ISBN: 978-0-470-50948-7
Links: Companion Site· Source code· Errata
The Java™ Tutorials, Sun Microsystems.
On-line: http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/
Publisher: Sun Microsystems (November 10, 2006)
Language: English
Safari Books Online – On-line access to Java (and other) books through the Rose-Hulman Logan Library web page
On-line: http://proquest.safaribooksonline.com/?uicode=rosehulman/
On-line books that may be helpful for CSSE220 include:
| How to Access Safari Tech Books Online |
These on-line books are only accessible from on-campus or via the Rose-Hulman VPN. From off-campus, see IAIT for more information on connecting to the VPN. From on-campus or once the VPN is connected, find Safari Books Online by following these steps:
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We will use ANGEL to post grades and materials that require restricted access (like quizzes and homework solutions). All materials for the course will be on ANGEL, linked from ANGEL, or in Subversion repositories that we will create for you.
Many of the materials on ANGEL are actually links from ANGEL to files posted on the Rose web server, so you can access them directly without logging in to ANGEL.
When we give a reading assignment, we seriously expect you to read it. In-class discussions will assume that you have done the reading and understood the “easy stuff” before class. Please ask about any details that you don’t understand; answering questions is one of the best parts of our job. But developing software is hard. The more class time we can devote to hands-on work, the more we can help you to succeed. Time spent covering material that you can learn from the book takes away from the hands-on time in class. We strongly believe that reading the textbook will help you.
We will post reading quizzes on ANGEL over most reading assignments. You're responsible for checking for the quiz and completing it before the start of class. Quizzes will close to new submissions 10 minutes before the start of class, so you aren't tempted to attempt them in a mad last dash.
Your solutions to programming problems should be well-designed and well-documented. We will suggest working on some programming problems with another person; however we will designate most problems as individual assignments.
We will assign several written homework problems and in-class exercises. They will usually be short thought problems, mathematical analyses, or algorithm-design exercises. We expect you to think through them carefully and write your answers legibly and clearly (if you can’t write it neatly, type it). On some problems, not only the correctness but also the quality of your solution will determine your grade. Some of the problems will be straightforward practice with concepts from the course; others will require creative solutions. Don’t put them off until the last minute!
When problems are designated as allowing you to work with a partner, if you need help finding people to work with, let us know, and we will put you in touch with other students who indicate a similar need. If you do an assignment with someone else, it is your responsibility to not allow anyone’s name (including your own) to be placed on the submitted program if that person does not understand the solution.
Each submitted program file should include your name(s), and a description of the file’s contents in comments at the top of your files. They should have reasonable and consistent comments, style, and indentation. They should not contain lines that are more than about 80 characters long. (Long lines make you, and us, side scroll to read to the end of the line; side scrolling hides the context of the line and makes it harder to think about the algorithm.)
Grades for programming problems will be based on correctness (mostly), efficiency (some), and style.
Quizzes (reading and in-class) and written assignments must be completed on time if you want credit for them.
However, we all have days when we are extremely busy, or times when a program takes longer to complete than we expect it will. To account for this, we give each student a “late day bank account” that starts with two late days.
Notification for a deposit or withdrawal: just complete the Late Day Bank Survey on ANGEL before the assignment is due. That is so we can know when it is okay to post a solution or discuss an assignment in class.
Some particular assignments may be designated as “no late days” assignments. This might happen because:
| Weight | Criteria |
|---|---|
| 10% | Reading quizzes |
| 30% | Homework, programming problems and projects, in-class exercises |
| 15% | Team project |
| 5% | In-class quizzes |
| 10% | Exam 1 |
| 10% | Exam 2 |
| 20% | Final Exam |
Final grades are also contingent on the following:
We will do our best to conform to the Rose-Hulman definition of the various grades, as described in the Academic Rules and Procedures. Note in particular that the phrase “thorough competence to do excellent work” appears there in the description of the “B” grade (not “A”), and it further states that “B” and “B+” will not be given for mere compliance with the minimum essential standards of the course.
We may adjust your overall average up or down by up to 5 percent, based on your citizenship in the CSSE 220 learning community. This includes attendance, promptness, preparation for class, positive participation in class and the online discussion forums, constructive partnership in pair and group assignments, timely completion of various surveys, and peer evaluation of other students’ code and of your team members for group projects.
The in-class time in this course constitutes an important learning experience. You should be there. After three unexcused absences you must speak with your instructor about whether you can continue in the course.
Serious illness is an excused absence. Running a fever? Contact the health center, don't come to class, email us so we know about the situation. We will work with you on a plan to make up the work when you're feeling better.
If you find errors in the textbook or any of our course documents, please report them via the Bug Reports discussion forum on ANGEL. We will give a small number of extra credit points to the first person to report a given bug. The number of points will depend on the severity and subtlety of the bug that you report. We recommend that you subscribe to that discussion forum. (You can do that using the Communications tab in ANGEL.)
We usually check email several times per day, and do our best to respond quickly. It is a good way to get answers to simple questions. We expect you to check your email daily (not necessarily on weekends, although even that is not a bad idea). When we send mail to you, we will use your Rose-Hulman address. If you do not currently read mail that is sent to that address, please have it forwarded to wherever you do read mail.
When you send course-related email directly to us, please include 220 in your subject line (and include a real subject line), so that we can quickly pick it out from among the dozens of daily email messages that we receive and respond to you more quickly.
Some examples of good and bad subject lines:
| Bad: | Confusion about Assignment 1 |
| Bad: | CSSE 220 |
| Good: | CSSE220: Confusion about Assignment 1 |
Don't forget the csse220-staff@rose-hulman.edu address. Your mail will go to both instructors and to all of the student assistants.
Discussion forums on ANGEL are a place where you can discuss various aspects of the course, including the assignments, with other class members. The student assistants and instructors will read the discussions and sometimes respond to your posts.
We welcome your suggestions for improving the course. Please tell us about things in the course that help you to learn, and things we might do to improve the quality of the course for you. If there is something that you'd like to tell us, but don't feel comfortable with us knowing who it comes from, you can use the Anonymous Suggestion Box survey that we have provided on ANGEL.
We will do our best to keep the class interactive and relevant. But we recognize that sometimes it is hard as a student to stay focused on the class. With laptops in class, there are many more ways to become distracted. Unfortunately these distractions are much more pernicious, since it is very easy to get drawn into things like IM conversations, RSS feeds, or Flash games.
In the classroom we strongly encourage you to turn off IM and email software and only use other software for things directly related to class. If you must use non-class-related software during class, then you should sit in the next-to-last row (no one should sit in the last row). Doing so will keep you from distracting your classmates with what is on your screen.
Recall the Institute policy on academic misconduct:
“Rose-Hulman expects its students to be responsible adults and to behave at all times with honor and integrity.”
Exams and homework will be done on an individual basis except when explicitly noted. The simple rule of thumb for individual work is:
Never give or use someone else’s code or written answers.
Such exchanges are definitely cheating and not cooperation. The departmental statement on academic honesty has more detailed advice.
We encourage you to discuss the problems and general approaches to solving them with other students. However, when it comes to writing code, it should be your own work (or the work of your group if it is a group or partner assignment). If you are having trouble understanding how some library code works or pinning down a run-time or logic error in your program, by all means talk to someone about it.
If you use someone else’s ideas in your solution (or any other work that you do anywhere), you have to:
If you are ever in doubt about whether some specific situation violates the policy, the best approach is to discuss it with your instructor beforehand. This is a very serious matter that we do not take lightly. Nor should you.
You should never look at another student’s solution to get ideas of how to write your own code. Beginning the process of producing your own solution with an electronic copy of work done by other students is never appropriate.
Plagiarism or cheating will result in a negative score (i.e., less than zero) for the assignment or exam. Egregious cases will result in a grade of “F” for the course. More importantly, such dishonesty steals your own self-esteem. So don’t cheat.
Revised by Curt Clifton and Delvin Defoe; written by Matt Boutell, based on format and lots of wording by Claude Anderson.