Programming Methologies, Spring 2024

Instructors:

Textbook:

Course goals:

• Write programs that use abstractions such as higher-order functions (for example: map, filter, and reduce), and object-oriented programming.
• Employ an accurate mental model of programming languages that support mutable state, assignable variables, objects, higher-order functions, and garbage collection, as well as understand fundamentals of their implementation.
• Design test cases to detect errors in code by applying systematic criteria, and write code predicates to validate the inputs and outputs of a potential solution to a programming problem.
• Select and use appropriate design patterns such as builders, fluent APIs, publish/subscribe, state, memento, and promises for handling errors.
• Reason about the correctness of code by establishing pre- and postconditions, and loop invariants.

Prerequisites

To succeed in COMPSCI 220, students should already understand:

1. Loops
2. Variables (declaration and scope)
3. First-order functions
4. Recursive functions with integer arguments
5. A few algorithms and data structures including lists, trees, and recursion

Course objectives

Students who complete COMPSCI 220 understand the following topics:

1. Programming with abstraction (higher-order functions, and object-oriented programming)
2. Programming with recursively-defined data structures (e.g., trees and lists)
3. An accurate mental model of programming languages that support mutable state, assignable variables, objects, higher-order functions, and garbage collection.
4. Testing
   • Given a problem statement and a solution in code, students can write 1) test cases that catch bugs in the solution; and 2) test cases that pass despite the presence of bugs.
   • Property-based testing: given a problem statement in prose, students can write predicates in code to validate the inputs and outputs of a potential solution
5. The use and extension of libraries in order to facilitate code development.
6. Program correctness verification.
7. Design patterns
   • Higher-order list processing functions. For example, map, filter, and reduce.
   • Handling errors without throwing exceptions. For example, the JavaScript Promise API
   • Other commonly-used design patterns.

Accommodations

The University of Massachusetts Amherst is committed to making reasonable, effective and appropriate accommodations to meet the needs of students with disabilities and help create a barrier-free campus. If you have a documented disability on file with Disability Services, you may be eligible for reasonable accommodations in this course. If your disability requires an accommodation, please notify your instructors as early as possible in the course so that we may make arrangements in a timely manner.

If you require any special services or accommodations during this course, you must register with Disability Services within the first two weeks of this course. This will give us time to plan accordingly to ensure that you get the help you need before it is too late. If you contact us after the two weeks we may not be able to provide you the help you need.

Honesty Policy

We will guide ourselves by the university’s academic honesty policy and guidelines for classroom civility. You must read both of these.

Grade calculation (subject to change)

Several factors determine your grade in this course. They are weighted approximately as follows:

The exact grading scheme may be adjusted during the course. However, a typical breakdown of percentages and final grades for this course are A (93-100), A- (90-92), B+ (87-89), B (83-86), B- (80-82), C+ (77-79), C (73-76), C- (70-72), D+ (67-69), D (60-66), F (0-59).

Topics (subject to change)