Brief description
This module is designed for students with experience of programming in procedural languages. The material covered will be similar to that in CS12230 but will build on the students' previous computing experience. The practical work associated with the module will help students to become familiar with Java and the development environment offered at Aberystwyth.

Personal transferable skills are an important quality of any software engineer and form an important part of this module.

Aims
This module aims to introduce students to the concepts of programming in the large. Though the module revisits the technique of functional decomposition, the main emphasis is placed on object-based design. The Java programming language is used as a basis for illustrating these concepts. The intention of the supervised practical sessions is to enhance the programming skills of participants, giving them practical experience of writing software systems in Java.

Weekly tutorials provide the pastoral support for the first semester and give a forum for discussing the technical aspects of material presented in this module.

Learning outcomes
The module concentrates on a professional approach to software development. On successful completion of the module, students should:

• have an awareness of the need for professionalism within computing, demonstrated through the quality of their program code;
• be able to demonstrate their understanding of problem abstraction and program design by producing good software designs;
• be able to describe their designs using simple Universal Modelling Language (UML) notation;
• be capable of realising their design in the Java programming language;
• be able to use the workstations to develop their programs to meet the specified requirements;
• have experience of team work within varying environments and have an appreciation of the idea of team roles.

Syllabus
1. Welcome and preview- 1 Lecture
Introduction to the department and the course.

2. Using the computing facilities at Aberystwyth - 2 Lectures
An overview of the facilities available and how to make the most of them.

3. Modular approaches to software design - 2 Lectures
A recap of functional decomposition; An introduction to object orientated design.

4. Programming in the large - An introduction to Java - 20 Lectures
Software crisis, abstraction, algorithms and programs; Programming constructs, expressions, primitive types, classes and objects; Information hiding; Further object oriented design - inheritance. Robust programs - exceptions.

5. An introduction to Graphical User Interfaces - 4 Lectures
Building on programming skills, this looks at developing graphical front ends to simple software systems.

6. Testing techniques and aids for error detection - 1 Lecture
A recap of the best approaches to testing software systems.