Course Syllabus, C++ Programming - Intermediate

This page last updated on: Mar. 31, 2002

Contents:

• General Information
• Description, Prerequisites, and Objectives
• Grading and Assignment Info
• Administrative and Legal Info
• Lecture Notes and Course Outline

General Information

Course Name

Instructor

Instructor Contact Info

Note: I occasionally travel out of town or have work project commitments, so phone call and e-mail replies might take an extra day or two during those periods.

Term

Textbooks and Other C++ Resources

• Thinking in C++, Vol 1 (2nd vol to be published in a year or two), Bruce Eckel, Prentice Hall Publishing, 2000, ISBN 0-13-979809-9. (This is a completely re-written and updated version of his 1995 Thinking in C++ textbook.) More information on this book can be found at: http://www.prenhall.com/divisions/ecs/cscat.html
  There is an online edition of this book, as well as early drafts of the second volume available for downloading at: http://www.bruceeckel.com/Books.
• Design Patterns, Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software, Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson, and John Vlissides, Addison Wesley, 1995, ISBN 0-201-63361-2. More information on this book can be found at: http://www.awl.com/cseng/ and the source code can be found at: http://hillside.net/patterns/DPBook/Source.html
• The C++ Programming Language, 3rd Ed., Bjarne Stroustrup, Addison Wesley, 1997, ISBN 0-201-88954-4. More information on this book can be found at: http://www.awl.com/cseng/

• The C++ Standard Library: A Tutorial and Reference, Nicolai Josuttis, Addison Wesley, 1999, ISBN 0-201-37926-0. More information on this book can be found at: http://www.awl.com/cseng/
• Effective C++, 2nd Edition, Scott Meyers, Addison Wesley Professional Computing Series, 1997, ISBN 0-201-92488-9. More information on this book can be found at: http://www.awl.com/cseng/

Course Requirements

• Attendance: You must attend eight of the ten class sessions to pass the course.
• Assignments: You must complete all assignments with an average score of 80% or better.
• Examinations: You must complete the examinations with a score of 80% or better.

Description, Prerequisites, and Objectives

1. Continue learning the syntax, features, and capabilities of C++. This includes discussing the advantages and disadvantages of various features, and when to use them.
2. Continue learning object-oriented design and generic programming concepts. To gain the greatest benefits from using C++ as a programming language, a solid understanding of object-oriented and generic design principles is necessary. The introductory course provides the basic concepts of OOD, and the intermediate course will start applying these concepts in more depth, and introduce various design idioms and design patterns.
3. A focus on both class design and class usage. The introductory course emphasizes class usage, with most of the class design and declarations provided as part of the assignment. The intermediate course will delve deeper into the techniques and issues associated with effective class design. There will be a continued emphasis on using pre-written C++ class libraries, particularly the standard C++ library, useful for quickly and effectively developing applications.
4. Learn selected design patterns and how to apply them. Design patterns are becoming a major force in software design, and this course will introduce students to a selected set of design patterns and how to use them in solving design problems.

A number of software development side-topics will be discussed as time allows, including testing techniques, exception handling strategies, portability issues, design tools, software components, and software development methodologies.

Prerequisites

• Has successfully completed C++ Programming: Introduction (or has equivalent experience).
• Is familiar with basic class syntax including class declarations and definitions, private, public, and protected sections, constructors, destructors, and copy constructors.
• Can overload member and non-member functions, and understands how the compiler examines function signatures for matches.
• Understands the concepts of class declarations versus class instances / objects, usage details associated with objects such as the this pointer, and object lifetime issues.
• Knows how to use const in the context of parameters, member functions, return types and const objects, knows reference parameters and variables, default arguments, member initialization lists, and static member functions and data.
• Can overload operators, particularly the assignment operator, and provide operator cascading abilities by returning reference objects (such as returning *this).
• Can perform basic class design, and in particular know how to use classes in a higher-level application.
• Understands syntax and semantics of inheritance and virtual functions.
• Understands basic template function usage and design.
• Understands basic object-oriented concepts such as class interfaces, encapsulation, inheritance, and polymorphism, container classes and iterators, and understands the strong-typing nature of C++.
• Knows basic C++ character I/O and file handling.
• Is very comfortable with C fundamentals and syntax, particularly pointer usage.
• Can write applications with multiple source and header files.
• Is very comfortable with dynamic memory management and data structure manipulation, including all aspects of the C++ new operator (with the exception of overloading the new operator).

Objectives

• Learn more advanced techniques and principles of object-oriented design and programming including a strong emphasis on inheritance, abstraction, polymorphism, and generic design (templates).
• Learn modularization, design, and partitioning techniques which aid in developing large, complex systems.
• Learn effective exception handling techniques, and the details of C++ exception handling syntax.
• Learn how to design and implement simple template classes and functions, and become proficient in using template classes and functions.
• Learn about advanced issues with container classes and iterators.
• Learn about more advanced C++ "gotcha's" and how to avoid them, such as implicit conversion operator invocation.
• Learn about relatively new features of C++ such as the mutable keyword, namespaces, new casting operators, and RTTI.
• Learn basic usage of many of the standard C++ library classes and the Standard Template Library (STL) portion of this library.
• Learn common design and class interface issues and approaches to solving them in C++.
• Learn advanced memory management techniques, including using smart pointers and reference counting.
• Learn about design patterns and how to apply them.

Grading and Assignment Info

Important -  Other Grading and Assignment Info

Administrative and Legal Info

The following page contains information on classroom closure situations, assignment originality and plagiarism, and disability accomodations: Administrative and Legal Info