# CS-130: Software Engineering

#### Westmont College

Winter Hall 206 and Whittier Parking Lot Tent<br/>
Tuesday/Thursday 4:00—5:50pm<br/>
08/31/2021-12/16/2021

#### Office Hours
45 minutes before class or by appointment.

#### Contact
By email, or Slack (preferred)

## Introduction

You've probably talked about data structures and algorithms, along with various programming languages and syntaxes, but what else is involved with being a professional engineer? In this class we'll discuss those extra ideas: designing a robust product, writing the software to make it come alive (all the while chasing a moving target) and finally ensuring quality and deployment.

## Class Format

This class is a project-based class. There will be one major project that all members will contribute to for the majority of the semester.  We'll have occasional readings that will help us on our software engineering journey.  As an initial team agreement, we've decided to meet in-person for the semester.  Being a member of a team means contributing in meaningful ways, but also showing up for your team—that means that attendance is essential.

### Goals
As a class, here are some of our goals (myself included!)

- To ask good questions (this is super important!)
- To be better programmers
- To be better communicators
- To deploy a usable web application
- Try out and have familiarity with variety of technologies and tools

### Grading

When working for a company, we're not assigned letter grades; however, since this is a *class* there will be grades.  There isn't a strict specific breakdown, but grades will be determined by the following factors (sorted highest weight to lowest):

1. Project *(Contributions, involvement, engagement)*
2. Participation *(Asking questions, attending class, being a team player)*
3. Readings & Assignments

While there aren't a tremendous number of assignments throughout the semester, each student will have regular 1:1 meetings with me.  At those times, we can check-in on progress, celebrate accomplishments, and discuss where improvements can be made. At any time, students may ask to meet and discuss grades.

### Thanks

Special thanks to Dan Shank for his willingness to share past course content and ideas.

## Posts

Below you'll find a list of readings, ideas, and other course work and policies. This course is a bit of a work in progress so it will be updated regularly!

Creative Software Architectures for Collaborative Projects

# Expectations & Tips for Success

In addition to our "traditional" syllabus, I wanted to include some expectations and tips for success. The following is a bulleted list (not necessarily in order) that itemizes some important things to keep in mind for our semester:

- Ask questions! Asking questions and asking *good* questions is the most important skill you can learn in school. We'll have many opportunities to practice this over the course of the semester.
- Learn how to learn.  Learning takes practice and involves asking questions (see prior bullet). Being a software engineer involves solving problems on your own, tinkering, making up solutions to things, reading obtuse documentation or playing with an API.
- Learn how to solve problems.  Similar to the last bullet, but I wanted to call it out separately.
- Reading code is just as important as writing it. In my opinion, writing code is *easier* than reading it.  This also means that copying code from Stack Overflow or a blog isn't advised without *understanding* what it does.

There will probably be more to come!