CS 2ME3 / SE 2AA4
Software Design Fundamentals
Winter 2011

• Instructor: Michael Soltys, email: soltys@mcmaster.ca
• TA:
  • Wen Yu <yuw4@mcmaster.ca>
  • Lucian Patcas <patcaslm@mcmaster.ca>
  • Hao Xu <xuh32@mcmaster.ca>
  • Junaid Aziz <azizmj@mcmaster.ca>
• Course Information (updated Jan 18, 2011, with new info regarding finalized lecture times and new TA)
• Lectures:
  • CS section: Mo, Th 15:30-16:20 and Tu 16:30-17:20, in BSB/136.
  • SE section: Mo, Th 9:30-10:20 and Tu 10:30-11:20, in BSB/136.
• Tutorials:
  • Fridays, 9:30-10:20 in BSB/136 for SE students (TA Hao Xu)
  • Tuesdays, 9:30-10:20 in BSB/136 for SE students (TA Junaid Aziz)
  • Mondays, 8:30-9:20 in BSB/120 for CS students (TA Lucian Patcas)
  • Wednesdays at 08:30-09:20 in BSB/120 for CS students (TA Wen Yu)
• Office Hours:
  • Instructor: Thursdays 12:30-2:30
• Course outline: The calendar description is as follows: Software development models; modularization; information hiding; specification and abstraction; software requirements; software maintenance; metrics; testing theory and strategies; documentation. We are going to achieve those objectives with the Python programming language, which we are going to use to solve algorithmic programming problems.
• Textbook:

  Michael Soltys An introduction to the analysis of algorithms. 2009 Published by World Scientific (available from the McMaster bookstore and also available from Amazon).

• Please Read: McMaster Academic Integrity Statement.
• Previous versions of this course: 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2010.

Announcements:

• Apr 13: Test 6 is now available for pick up; the tests will be placed in a box outside my office. Note that the box contains only the SE tests (the CS tests were returned in class).
• Mar 25: Test 6, the last test, on Monday March 28, will be on the following: conceptual aspects of writing security applications, and the material related to the Diffie-Hellman key exchange protocol. Both implementation issues as well as how the protocol works.
• Mar 21: Modular programming slides.
• Mar 11: Nathan recommends the following SVN tool for those who are struggling with it: tortoisesvn.tigris.org
• Mar 11: There is going to be a special lecture on April 5, during the usual class time:

  Digital Evidence Forensics
  By Tim Paterson, Electronics Unit of the Physical Sciences Section at the Centre of Forensic Sciences

  Increasingly, digital evidence forensics requires low level analysis in the form of chip removal and hex dump interpretation. This, coupled with the rapid pace of technological development, presents many challenges for the modern DE forensic practitioner. In this talk I will focus on the challenges presented in software and method validation, and recovering user data by reverse engineering embedded systems (e.g. cellular telephones, card skimmers).

• Mar 9: Assignment 2 due on Friday March 11 at 10pm. Please submit it using SVN.
• Mar 9: Test 5, on Monday March 14, will contain two questions on Formal Verification and one question on the Simple-Knapsack problem — pay particular attention to the idea of “prototyping” as explained in class using this example to obtain the best implementation possible.
• Mar 7: Some you may find this event interesting: Nik Garkusha, Open Source Strategy Lead of Microsoft Canada
• Mar 5: Click here for the handout on software verification.
• Mar 3: Two papers by D. Parnas on modular design:
  1. A Rational Design Process: How and Why to Fake It
  2. On the Criteria To Be Used in Decomposing Systems into Modules
• Feb 24: One of the handouts distributed in class on Feb 17 is available on line; click here for the other one.
• Feb 20: Test 4 on Monday Feb 28 will comprise the following:
  1. A question on the handouts given on Thursday Feb 17 (one handout on software qualities related to assignment 2 and the article on Measurements of Software Maintainability).
  2. Section 4.2 in the textbook; do all three problems in preparation.
• Feb 18: The TAs will have no office hours during reading week.
• Feb 17: For those of you who have a Windows machine, or no SVN installed, you can use your departmental account:
  ssh yourmacid@mills.cas.mcmaster.ca
  You can then upload your assignment to your mills.cas.mcmaster.ca account and submit to subversion from there as explained below. If you have technical difficulties, Robert Li, lis3@mcmaster.ca can provide help with UNIX. Today's SVN slides are available here. Robert Li's Linux tutorial is available here.
• Feb 17: In the first assignment, the input file, called graph.txt in the assignment write-up, can be either input as a command-line argument, or the program can prompt the user for the file. It is up to you.
• Feb 15: On February 17 there will be a tutorial on subversion during the usual lecture time. Also note the short subversion tutorial that I posted below (Jan 20 entry in announcements). It will be repeated in both sections (SE and CS).
• Feb 12: Test 3 will have one general question on greedy algorithms, and one question on job scheduling with profits, and one question on Savitch's algorithm.
• Feb 10: For assignment 1, the input graph has to be a grid, but it does not have to connected. If it is not connected, it will output a spanning forest, rather than a spanning tree; it is a robust algorithm. Thus, you only need to test the graph for being a grid, not for being connected.
• Jan 28: Monday's test will have one question on “stable marriage” and two questions in “spanning trees”.
• Jan 27: We have a 4th TA joining the course, Junaid Aziz; just added two extra tutorial times — see above.
• Jan 27: Google Python course could be useful for some; thanks Jeff Avery for suggesting this.
• Jan 20: Submitting your work:
  1. You must either have subversion on your system (easy to install), or use your account in one of the ITB labs (or ssh into a departmental machine).
  2. Put in the header of your Python program the names in your team.
  3. Choose a member in your team who will be submitting the work for everyone on your team; let this be the <user> in the next step.
  4. svn co <https://websvn.mcmaster.ca/cs2me3-se2aa4/>/<user> --username <user>
  5. Move your program to the local copy of your repository, i.e., the svn working directory on your system.
  6. svn add st.py
  7. svn commit -m "<message>"
     Note that the message is mandatory (you have to give one, even if it is blank quotes).
  8. svn status
  9. Note that you can resubmit newer versions as often as you like, until the deadline, with the command svn update.
  10. The deadline for Assignment 1: February 17, 10pm.
  If you have questions, please take them to the office hours. Also, it would be wise to attempt to submit (even a trial version, or some test file) well before the deadline.
• Jan 19: See sligthly modified TA office hours that are now fixed; the only change is that the Mondays tuturials will be in a bigger room: BSB 120.
• Jan 18: Test 1 with solutions has been posted below.
• Jan 13: There was a question at the end of the SE lecture today that I didn't have time to answer satisfactorily: if i divides m and n, then i is less than or equal to gcd(n,rem(m,n)). To see that we use the following principle: if z divides x and y, then z divides ax+by for any a,b. So if i divides m and n, then i divides m-qn, which is equal to r=rem(m,n). So i divides both n and rem(m,n), and thus i has to be less than or equal to d=gcd(n,rem(m,n)) since d is the greates possible number that divides both n and rem(m,n).
• Jan 12: At this point, and until further notice, we are going to continue with the lecture times given in the timetable (i.e., CS and SE have separate lecture times, as indicated at the top of this page). We are going to start our TA office hours:
  • January 14, 9:30-10:20 in BSB/136 for SE students (TA Hao Xu)
  • January 17, 8:30-9:20 in ITB/101 for CS students (TA Lucian Patcas)
  Test 1 is going to take place on January 17 — please go to your assigned lecture time. The test will be written during the lecture, and will comprise the material in the textbook until & including section 1.3.2 (Euclid's algorithm).
• Jan 9: Monday January 10, there will be an SE lecture at 9:30 and a CS lecture at 15:30, both in BSB/136/
• Jan 7: In order to have both sections caught up on the material, here is what was done in the course in the first week; please make sure you read the relevant material in the textbook:
  • Presented Problem 1.3 (an example of induction with solution in the back, on page 17).
  • Presented Problem 1.8 (also an example of induction with solution in the back, on page 18).
  • Presented Problem 1.11 (an example of invariance, with solution on page 20).
  • Started Problem 1.13.
  • Distributed the first assignment, due on February 17; see below.
• Jan 6: Assignment 1 has been posted below. Note that in the main diagram, in the paper-distributed version, the edge labeled with 15 should be solid but it was dotted. This has been fixed in the PDF version posted below.
• Jan 5 at 4:10pm: Given that the Registrar's Office has not been able to unify the two lecture times thus far, tomorrow — Thursday January 6th — I will give two lectures: 9:30-10:20 for SE students and 15:30-16:20 for CS students, both in BSB/136. Please keep checking this web page; hopefully the scheduling conflict will be resolved soon.
• Jan 4 at 12:14pm: To follow up on the previous post regarding the lecture times: again, there is a mix-up with the lecture times. The next lecture will be today, Tuesday, at 4:30 in BSB 136. I am following the original lecture time posted on this web page; however, many students received a different schedule. While the registrar's office is making arrangements, please come to the current lecture times if you are able to (Mo, Th 15:30-16:20 and Tu 16:30-17:20, in BSB/136). Otherwise, please start reading the textbook, and keep checking this web page for announcements. Hopefully, this confusion will be resolved very quickly.
• Jan 4: The Python official website from where you can download Python — check first if you already have it: on OS X, Linux or UNIX type python --version. We are going to use Python 2. You can download a manuscript of Python for software design by Allen B. Downey as a PDF or HTML for free.
• IMPORTANT: Software Design I is being taught as a joint course: it is both CS2ME3 and SE2AA4. It seems like there was a scheduling problem, and while there were supposed to be the same lecture times for both, CS2ME3 and SE2AA4 have been scheduled at different times. Please read this page for an announcement (coming soon, hopefully) regarding the lecture times; we are currently making arrangements with the registrar's office.

Assignments and Tests:

Item	Due Date	pdf file	comments
Test 1	January 17	CS test and SE test
Test 2	January 31	CS test and SE test
Assignment 1	February 17	a1.pdf	Testcases: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 corrected.
Test 3	February 14	CS test and SE test
Test 4	February 28	CS test and SE test
Assignment 2	March 11	a2.pdf
Test 5	March 14	CS test and SE test
Test 6	March 28	CS test and SE test
Assignment 3	April 4	a3.pdf