Syllabus

Java Programming

(Preliminary Draft)

DIST 1090

Spring 2004 (04-2)

CRN: 29573

Monday & Wednesday 3:00-4:15 Room 411

  Michael B. Spring

Department of Information Science and Telecommunications

University of Pittsburgh

  727 SIS Building

Personal Email: spring@imap.pitt.edu

Class Email: mbsclass@mail.sis.pitt.edu

Office Hours:  Monday-Friday 8:00-6:00

Phone: 412-624-9429

Disability Accommodation

If you have a disability for which you are or may be requesting an accommodation, you are encouraged to contact both your instructor and the Office of Disability Resources and Services (DRS), 216 William Pitt Union, phone (412) 648-7890/(412) 383-7355 (TTY) as early as possible in the term. DRS will verify your disability and determine reasonable accommodations for this course.

Introduction

This course is focused on object oriented programming in Java.  You will learn Java, but the context will be object oriented programming and programs that are substantive.  While the fundamentals of Java can be learned in a few days, it takes years to become a good Java programmer.  This is because Java’s power comes from the ability to reuse code and there are already hundreds of reusable components that a “good” Java programmer should be aware of.  Consider for example that a simple JTextBox has about two dozen methods and can be learned in a few minutes.  On the other hand, a JEditorPane has several related classes that must be learned and literally thousands of related methods which require months to come to grips with. (There are hundreds of Java packages, each of which could be the subject of an entire course.  You will choose those of interest to you beyond those covered in class.)

The good news is that if you come to grips with the Java in an intelligent way – understanding its structure and capabilities, you can extend your knowledge of Java as needed and on your own.  This will be the approach in this course.  Early on, you will be directed by the instructor and learning will be closely guided.  As the course moves on, you will be free to choose what you will focus on and learn and the classes will focus less on the language and more on concepts and ideas for problem solving and system design.

Overview

The course will begin with the fundamentals of object-oriented programming and the implementation of OOP as it applies these to Java.  The course will move as far into Java as possible focusing on Java as a cross platform development language.  To this end, the course will focus on standalone Java applications.  While web components – applets, servlets, and enterprise java beans will be touched upon, they will not be the focus of this course.  The primary foci will be as follows:

The mechanics of programming in Java

Objected oriented thinking in programming

Language basics

Graphical user interfaces (Swing),

File I/O and database connectivity (JDBC), and

Sockets and client server implementations

Course Philosophy

The instructor normally teaches graduate courses where students share the responsibility for creating a learning experience.  As an advanced undergraduate course, this course is much like a graduate course.  Specifically, this means students are expected to do two things:

Come to class prepared:  Some students hate to be lectured to from a book, others love it. Some students hate interactive classes, other students love them. This course will be taught in an interactive fashion and will cover ideas and concepts based upon but beyond those covered in the book.  The instructor will ask questions about what you have read in preparation for the class.  It is my style to challenge you in class to think about the issues and to question you about your grasp of the material.  It is the student’s responsibility to read and learn the material in the textbooks. It is my job to clarify what the textbooks fail to make clear and to go beyond what is said in the textbooks to new or more difficult ideas. The lectures will begin with the assumption that students have read and understood what is in the books. If you have not read the assignments prior to class, the lectures will be very difficult to follow. It is important that you come to class prepared to discuss and move beyond what was in the books and readings.

Be engaged in the subject: While much can be learned by rote memorization, things learned by memorization tend not to be the skills that one generalizes and applies in later life. A different kind of learning takes place when students engage in the process actively. This course is based upon students being actively engaged—in class, in the assignments, in the reading etc.   The goal is to learn by producing products that work. In all cases the products will be both toys and real. That is to say, they will provide real functionality, but at a level that is attainable within the course of a term.

At a personal level, the instructor is not interested in excuses.  I am interested in results and performance.  As I see it, adults – and you are adults – make choices.  Late assignments, lack of attention to details, missing class, failure to do the necessary reading are your choices.  You choose to perform or you choose not to perform.  You, and I, plan for social events, family responsibilities, and other activities.  When my children were born, I missed no classes and came prepared.  When I need to travel overseas, I prepare and record my lectures in advance.

As I see it, if you do not master the assignments in the course in 10 hours, you should try 20.  As a full time student, your job is learning.  I anticipate that you will spend 10-15 hours per week on this course – three hours per week in class and about 9 hours per week on reading and homework.  (For every hour in class, you will spend a minimum of three hours preparing and following up.  Thus, every week you will be spending a minimum of twelve hours working on this course.)  You will be awake 90 hours or more per week.  I don’t care how you spend 75 of them, but I expect 15 will be devoted to the course.

Course Goals

The goals of the course are to:

• Understand the basics of object oriented programming
• Apply the principles of OOP to Java
• Learn the mechanics of using an IDE to develop programs
• Use Java to develop a simple game application
• Use Java to develop a client server game application

Course Materials

There is only one required book for the course.

Ivor Horton, Beginning Java 2 Wrox; (March 2002) ISBN: 0764543652

However, students are strongly encouraged to purchase the following for reference.

Brett Spell, Professional Java Programming Wrox(2003). ASIN: 186100382X

Beyond these book, you will find that the online resources to answer all your questions.

Course Requirements and Grading:

Grading for this course will be out of 100 points.

There will be seven programming assignments in the course. The assignments will account for 42% of the grade.  They will include:

A first java program with I/O(3pts)

A java program with multiple classes (4 pts)

A simple GUI based Java program(5pts)

A GUI based java program implementing MVC(Model View Controller) (6pts)

A simple one person game in Java(7pts)

A multi-person game in Java(8pts)

A simple network based game in Java(9pts)

There will be a midterm exam that will account for 20% of the grade.

A final programming project that will account for 30% of the grade.

The instructor will assign 8% of the grade based on his estimation of student effort and involvement in the class.

Each programming assignment will be submitted electronically.  The assignment will not be graded unless it is complete.  A complete assignment will consist of:

an email which contains:

a synopsis of your program

complete instructions for anything that needs to be done to run the program.

An attached zip file that contains:

Any data files that are needed

Generated javadoc files

All the source files – which must be formally documented using the javadoc

The compiled class files

Grading of the projects will be bases on written report, as well as the software design and

Implementation.  The final project will contain all the components listed above.

Programming assignments will be due before 3:00am of the day of the class they are assigned.  One point will be deducted for each day a programming assignment is late. 

Preliminary Lecture Outline (Draft 10/28/2003)

The outline presented below is very tentative and still needs to be coordinated with the book selected for this course and the assignments proposed.

Lecture	Topics	Assignments
Week 1 Lecture A	Course Introduction History and basics of Java The JDK, JRE, and IDE Tools: javac, java, javap, javadoc Java API Documentation	Syllabus JDK Installation Documentation
Week 1 Lecture B:	Java memory model Introduction to Classes and objects	Ch. 1: Introducing Java Ch. 2: Programs, Data, Variables, and Calculation
Week 2 Lecture A	Language Basics Data types Control Structures Logic	Ch. 3: Loops and Logic Ch. 4:  Arrays and Strings121
Week 2 Lecture B:	Classes: fields, methods, and constructors Objects and Object References ("this", "final", abstract, static fields and methods) Parameter passing in Java method call Declaration, creation, initialization, use Access Control: private, default, public static field and static method in-line initialization	Assignment 1 Ch. 5: Defining Classes
Week 3 Lecture A	extending classes: subclass, superclass inheritance: fields and methods constructor chain... super(...) inheritance hierarchy Object reference promotion	Ch. 6: Extending Classes and Inheritance
Week 3 Lecture B:	Packages and JVM run-time environment CLASSPATH for Compiler and JVM import statement	Assignment 2
Week 4 Lecture A	Exception and Exception handling Throwing an exception: throw Method/Caller contract: throws Exception handling: try-catch-finally Exception objects
Week 4 Lecture B:	GUI and IDE Components and containers Sandboxes Layout management Events	Ch. 16:  Creating Windows
Week 5 Lecture A	Exception class extension throws - declaration with Exception types try-catch-blocks	Assignment 3 Ch. 7:  Exceptions
Week 5 Lecture B:	Extending class for inheritance Overriding methods Dynamic method binding Polymorphism final method and final class
Week 6 Lecture A	Introduction to Swing (and AWT) Component and Container and Layout Jframes and JPanel: organizing components Jbuttons, Jlists, JtextField, etc. Layouts: FlowLayout, GridLayout, BorderLayout Event handling model in swing: delegation	Ch. 17: Handling Events Ch. 18: Drawing in a Window Ch. 19: Extending the GUI
Week 6 Lecture B:	Inner Class and local inner class Event class, Listener interface Listener object and Event Handler Listener Registration (addListner)
Week 7 Lecture A	Access control: private, default, protected, public. Abstract classes and methods Interfaces: class vs type Defining an interface Implementing an interface in a class	Ass 4 Ch. 12: Serializing Objects Ch. 13: Collection Classes
Week 7 Lecture B:	Interface extending interface Implementing multiple interfaces Issues of name conflicts in implementing interfaces
Week 8 Lecture A	Review for Midterm	Ass 5
Week 8 Lecture B:	Midterm
Week 9 Lecture A	The delegation model for event handling Source, Event, and Listener objects, Handler method. Inner Class	Ass6 Ch. 8: Understanding Streams Ch. 9: Accessing Files and Directories Ch. 10: Writing Files Ch. 11: Reading Files
Week 9 Lecture B:	Inner class: member inner class and local inner class Listener interfaces and Adapter class Anonymous inner class
Week 10 Lecture A	Games and game theory Information theory Types of games Game basics	Ass 7
Week 10 Lecture B:	Game Design Rules Roles Controls
Week 11 Lecture A:	Threads Control of Threads	Ch. 15: Threads
Week 11 Lecture B	Open
Week 12 Lecture A	ODBC and JDBC – setting up Data Source Name Setting up table in Microsoft Access Using JDBC: Connection, Statement, ResultSet	Ch. 20: Filing and Printing Documents Ch. 21: Java and XML Ch. 22: Creating and Modifying XML Documents
Week 12 Lecture B:	JDBC Connection and Executing SQL Connection and executing SQL Statement, using Result Set.
Week13 Lecture A	Client Server Basics Client Server Algorithms	Ch. 14: A Collection of Useful Classes
Week 13 Lecture B:	Protocols	Final