CR: Winter 2014

Decided changes (needs paperwork)

switch 3rd year courses that require 1805 to require 2804.
3005: have 2406 and 2804 as prereq, not 1805 and 2402
- implications for non-CS majors/minors?

require students to take English or other humanities that requires reading comprehension and writing.
required second year course in writing
- read technical papers of historic importance
- write multiple small papers on readings
- outsourced partially - jointly taught
- prereq for 3004, 4905
Honours project
- classroom component - half credit or less of material
- posters for science fair, potentially in different room

teach research reading, writing, methods
3rd year
divided into multiple modules covering different research areas, each module taught by a different prof
write paper for term, graded by prof in research area
also have some small grades - responses or critiques of research methods

In order to determine whether and how to change 1405 and 1406, here are some thoughts on what the learning objectives for first year should be.

Problem solving:

Be able to read and understand a written problem description.
be able to break down a program (or object) using single-purpose, reusable functions
Have a conceptual understanding of function input and output, not just syntactic understanding
be able to break down a program using single-purpose, reusable objects
- understand the above is necessary for correctly designed programs, and that "programmer convenience" (e.g. let's lump everything into one class because it's easier) is never a valid design choice
experience designing objects that promote data abstraction and encapsulation at the simplest level
be able to create simple programs from scratch (e.g., on paper)

Programming language features/conventions:

Be familiar with the basics of expression evaluation: operators and operands; operator arity, precedence, associativity
Be able to program using the basic Java/C/C++ operators (compound assignment +=, -=, etc, prefix and postfix ++ and --)
Functions:
- understand that all functions take input parameters, perform a task, and store the results in output parameters
- given a function, be able to identify input parameters, output parameters, and input/output parameters
identifier names (objects/functions/variables), indenting, code commenting

Application development

Programming environment/runtime:

Understand a very basic memory model:
- all variables are stored in linear fashion in memory
- all variables have characteristics: name, value, data type, address in memory, scope
- be familiar with the above terminology
- anecdote from Christine: at the start of 2401, if I write "int i = 10;" on the board and ask what are the variable's "name" and "value", they don't understand the terminology
Have a conceptual model of how parameters are passed to functions and how values are returned
understand the difference between pass-by-value and pass-by-reference

Debugging techniques

Understand what deleting any line in a program will do and *why* that behavior occurs.
using "print" statements to observe dynamic program state
use of a command-line debugger, including understanding how to single step through a program and how to obtain the value of variables at specific points in program execution

Evaluation strategies

Grade programming assignments for quality (good design, following conventions) using clear criteria and constructive feedback, rather than whether or not they "work". It is insufficient to be marking assignments based solely on whether they work or not.

Tools