COMP365: Software Engineering Spring’20

Welcome to Software Engineering for Spring’20!

• Instructor: Dr. Matthew Lang
  • Email: langm@rhodes.edu
  • Phone: (440) 666-2694
  • Office: Briggs 207
  • Office Hours: TR 1-2, W 1-2
  • Zoom id: mattlang
  • Schedule time: calendly.com/mattlang
• MWF 11:00-11:50am, Briggs 108
• Course Syllabus
• Feedback^[1]

Course Description

The software systems we often find the most useful and magical are also the largest and most complex to build and understand. In order for these systems to be reliable, maintainable, and secure, they must be built according to disciplined and well-founded methods. This course examines these methods—both in the large (defining requirements, system design, architecture patterns, software process, etc.) and in the small (version control, testing, benchmarking, code review, etc.).

Project Description

In this class the majority of your work will take the form of contributing to a large open source software project. You will work in small teams to make real contributions to production-quality software. Project guidelines can be found here, please read them thoroughly.

Setting up your environment for this course

In this course, we’ll be primarily programming in Rust in a *nix environment. If you have a laptop or computer running OSX or Linux, you will be fine, but you will have to install tools and libraries required for work in the class.

If you are unfamiliar with using a *nix environment, this page has pointers to excellent tutorials and references.

Update: The class VM image is available now. Follow these instructions for using it.

Feedback

At the end of this course (and halfway through), you will have an opportunity to evaluate me and your experience in this course. However, hearing your feedback way after the fact doesn’t allow me any opportunity to either emphasise the things you are finding helpful, or to correct the things that may give you friction. In order to provide you with an opportunity to give me feedback in semi-real-time, I’ve created this form. Your comments are anonymous (but if you either don’t believe me or want to be more cautious, you can fill it out in your browser’s incognito mode, so that you aren’t logged in to anything).

I will take all comments seriously, and try to do the best that I can to make sure that you are heard through my actions.