CS 243 - Software Development Tools

Credits: 3
Variable Credit Course: No

Lecture Hours: 33
Lab Hours: 0
Worksite/Clinical Hours: 0
Other Hours (LIA/Internships): 0

Course Description: Learn about and practice using the tools that developers use on a daily basis such as the debugger, command line, version control systems, and other collaboration tools. Also includes an introduction to software testing, writing test cases, and the test-driven development process.

Prerequisite: CS 123 with grade C or higher or concurrent enrollment.
Meets FQE Requirement: No
Integrative Experience Requirement: No

Student Learning Outcomes

Compare and contrast development environments including an integrated development environment and building from the command line.
Use various debugging strategies and tools (regardless of who the original coder was) to debug a given codebase written by a programmer.
Develop a testing strategy including test cases to test a codebase of any size.
Work collaboratively with a team of programmers while implementing effective version control on a codebase.
Develop program documentation using standard documentation tools such as Javadoc.
Navigate and interact with a file system using the command line.

Course Contents

A variety of development environments, including creating and building from the command line.
Debugging techniques and strategies.
Different levels/focus areas/strategies for software testing.
Test-cases, write tests, and applying them to a substantive codebase.
Debugging tools such as watches, breakpoints, and step over/step execution into, for finding and fixing errors using modern programming IDE’s.
Version control to collaborate on a codebase, including: Scoping tasks and creating effective definition-of-done statements; Documenting work process with commits; Branching and merging to work independently and stay current; Reviewing team members’ code and providing clear feedback; Resolving merge conflicts.

Instructional Units: 3