CS 310 - Object-Oriented Programming with Java

Spring 2009

As perhaps an even more dramatic illustration of the growth in complexity, it is sobering to realize that there are more public methods in the java and javax package hierarchies than there are words in Jensen and Wirth.

Eric Roberts, The Dream of a Common Language
SIGCSE Technical Simposium on Computer Science Education Proceedings, March 2004

Table of Contents

Course Description

This is a course introducing object-oriented programming and Java; see the CS 310 entry in the course catalog for the official description of the course.

The prerequisite for this class is CS 305.

The course is divided into fourteen one-week sections; see the syllabus for details.

The class meets Tuesdays and Thursdays from 2:00 p.m. to 3:50 p.m. in Howard Hall C-1 starting on Tuesday, 20 January. There is no class during Spring Recess, Tuesday 10 March and Thursday 12 March. The last day of class is Thursday, 30 April.

Objectives

This course has three objectives. By the end of the semester, you should

Instructor

R. Clayton, rclayton@monmouth.edu. Office hours are from 1 to 2 p.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays in HH C1; see the schedule for details.

Grading

The usual grade ranges are in effect:
95 ≤A
90 ≤A-<95
86.6≤B+<90
83.3≤B <86.6
80 ≤B-<83.3
76.6≤C+<80
73.3≤C <76.6
70 ≤C-<73.3
60 ≤D<70
F<60
All grades are kept with one digit of precision to the right of the decimal point and 0.05 rounded up. No grades are adjusted to a curve; that means, for example, that 89.9 is always a B+, never an A-.

Final Grade

The final grade is the weighted sum of quiz-, assignment-, and writing-grade average with the weights

    25%quizes
    25%writing assignments
    50%programming assignments

Each individual quiz-, writing- and assignment-grade average is a straight, unweighted average.

Mid-term grades are the straight, unweighted averages of whatever quiz, writing, and assignment grades have accumulated by the mid-term grade deadline (Tuesday, 17 March).

Quizes

There are 14 Quizes, one each week on Thursdays; see the syllabus for the schedule. Quizes are given in class, and are closed book with no notes; calculators and computers will not be necessary. The quizes are cumulative, covering everything taught up to and including the class before the quiz. Quizes should take no more than fifteen minutes to complete, and are given within the first half-hour of class. Quiz answers will be made available off the syllabus. There are no mid-terms or finals.

Programming Assignments

There will be four three-week programming assignments; see the syllabus for details.

Writing Assignments

CS 310 a writing-intensive course satisfying one of your two General-Education requirements for writing-intensive courses.

Media

Textbook

The textbook for this class is Core Java 2, Vol. 1 — Fundamentals eighth edition by Cay Horstmann and Gary Cornell, Sun Microsystems Press, 2008. An errata is available off Horstmann's web page for the book.

This course covers features added to Java 5 (generics in particular); earlier editions of Core Java won't cover these features, so be sure to get at least the seventh edition, if not the edition you're supposed to get.

An annotated bibliography of books about Java.

E-Mail

Feel free to send e-mail to rclayton@monmouth.edu . Unless I warn you beforehand, I'll usually respond within a couple of hours during the usual work days; if I don't respond within a day, resend the message.

Mail relevant to the class are stored in a hyper-mail archive. If your message is of general interest to the class, I'll store it, suitably stripped of identification and along with my answer, in the archive.

Home page

If you're reading this on paper, you can find the class home page at http://www.monmouth.edu/rclayton/web-pages/s09-310/index.html. I'll make the class notes, assignments, and quizes available off the syllabus; you should get in the habit of checking the syllabus regularly.

Podcasts

The lectures for this class will be recorded and podcast. Audio will be available on the syllabus and via an RSS feed.

Policies

Assistance

People who need assistance or accommodations above and beyond what is usually provided in class should contact the University's ADA/504 coordinator to get those needs met. See the Disability Services page for more details.

Attendance

I have no class attendance policy; you may attend class or not as you see fit. However, I hold you responsible for knowing everything that goes on in class; "I wasn't in class for that." is not an acceptable excuse for a wrong answer, or for giving no answer at all.

My attendance policy applies only to lecture attendance; it does not apply to other kinds of attendance which may be required for the course. Repeated failures to meet the attendance expectations set for tests, meetings, projects, labs or other forms of course work will have a bad influence on your grade.

Monmouth University does have a class attendance policy, which you can find in the Academic Information chapter of the Student Handbook. To the extent that I need to keep the record straight, I will take attendance. Attendance lists, however, are entirely for the University's benefit; I will make no use of them in grading.

Cheating

I deal with suspected cheating by failing first and asking questions later. Although cheating has many forms, I generally consider cheating to be any attempt to claim someone else's work as your own; also, I consider both the provider and the user of the work guilty of cheating. See the chapters on Academic Information and the Student Code of Conduct in the Student Handbook for more details.

Complaining about Grades

I recognize and encourage a student's sacred right to complain about their grade. There are, however, a few rules under which such complaining should take place, and those students who don't follow the rules will be less successful in their complaints than those students who do follow the rules.

First, the only complaint that matters is that something got marked wrong when it was actually right. When you come to complain, be prepared to present, in explicit detail, what it is you did and why you think it's right.

Second, complaints about a particular test or assignment are only valid until the next test or assignment is due; after that point the book is permanently closed on all previous test or assignment grades.

Late Assignments

Assignments must be turned in by their due date; assignments turned in after their due date are late. You should contact me as soon as possible if you need to negotiate a due-date extension. The longer you wait to negotiate, the less likely it is you'll be successful; in particular, you have almost no chance of getting an extension if you try for one the day before the due date, and you have no chance of getting an extention on the due date.

A late assignment is penalized five points a day for each day it's late. I use a 24-hour clock running from midnight to midnight to measure days; note this means that an assignment handed in the day after it's due is penalized ten points: five for the day it was due and five for the next day.

Missing Tests

There may occasionally be a conflict between taking a test and doing something else, particularly among those working full time. If you're going to be out of town, or on jury duty, or whatever, on a test day, let me know beforehand and we'll discuss a make-up test.

A make-up test must be scheduled to be taken by the date of the test following the missed test (or the final exam if you miss the last test). If a missed test is not made up by the time of the next test, you get a zero for the missed test.

There will be only one make up given per missed test. If more than one person misses the same test, those people will have to coordinate among themselves to pick a mutually agreeable date for the make up.

Links

Learn object-oriented programming with Java at home! Courtesy of ArsDigita University.

What else can you do with the JVM?

Java notes and basics, written to fill in various lacunae and rectify various infelicities found in Java text books.

The previous version of this course.

This page last modified on 12 January 2009.