Programming Stream

Programming Stream | Market Demand | Course Content | Work in Progress | Members | Issues

Welcome to the Programming Stream Group at the School of Computer Studies

Feel free to contribute to this wiki and help develop and refine our curriculum further

Overview

This wiki describes some of the curriculum developments within the programming stream at the School of Computer Studies

• A variety of projects are currently active and driven by
  • the general need to produce professional programmers ready to enter the workplace
  • the growing digital game programming industry
  • the growing open source communities for software developers
• Most of the work reported here has been initiated and is being sustained by faculty
• Much of the information here is being provided
  • to inform members of the status quo
  • to solicit member comments and criticisms

Questions for Discussion

• how do we attract the best and the brightest to our program
• how early should students be exposed to open source tools
• should students work with repositories
• should students work in teams in OOP344, BTP300
• do we need to change emphasis on the material covered in these courses

C Programming

• the standard that we teach in our C courses is C89
• C99 introduced several new features
  • //
  • long long
  • variable length arrays
  • inline function
  • gets() deprecated
• C1x is under preparation
  • support international programming, minimize incompatibilities, projected publication in 2012
  • improved Unicode support
  • multithreading
  • _Generic keyword
• shouldn't we start to teach C99 in preparation for C1x

C++ Programming

• the standard that we teach is a mixture of Pre-standard C++ and C++98
  • C and function style casts are deprecated in C++98
• C++0x is nearing completion
• shouldn't we remove our dependencies on Pre-standard C++ in preparation for C++0x

Professional Options

Game Programming

• what are the minimum requirements for game programming students ?
• are those requirements being met ?
• GAM666/DPS901 brings together programming and systems for the first time
• should enrollment in the introductory course be capped
• should CPD students be given the option to take introductory game programming
  • top CPD students who enroll often do well in this course
• should workshops be added to these courses
• should we issue game programming certificates

Open Source

• what are the minimum requirements for open source students ?
• are those requirements being met ?