Programming Stream

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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 ?