CSE 110 Software Engineering
Welcome to CSE 110 Software Engineering! We love building great software, and want to help you become great software engineers.
This website is divided into many sections (pages), accessible from the drop-down at the upper-right.
Class Meetings
LECTURE : MWF 11:00am-11:50am Mosaic Hall 0114 [podcast link]
LAB: Monday 12:00-2:50pm, CSE Basement, rooms B230, B240, and B260
Monday 3:00-5:50pm, CSE Basement, rooms B230 and B240
All students are welcome at all above lab hours.
Come any time and go any time
Lab must be checked off by end of office/lab hours on Friday (check Course Calendar)
DISCUSSION: [podcast link]
Tuesday 8:00pm-8:50pm Mosaic Hall 0113
FINAL: Tuesday, December 12th, 11:30am - 2:30pm (see Canvas and Piazza for details)
OFFICE HOURS: Please see "Team" page for details.
Course Description
The timely construction of a quality software system that meets a customer's needs, is challenging. In this course you will get an introduction to team-based software engineering and development methods, including specification, design, implementation, testing, and software process. The course emphasizes team development, agile methods, software design, and use of tools such as IDE's, version control, test harnesses, and continuous integration.
Course Requirements and Grading
Grading elements [in percent, subject to change before 9/29, 11am]:
meet the professor [0% (1% extra credit)]
syllabus quiz [1%]
pre-class reading quizzes [5%]
quizzes (in class) [16%]
labs [8%]
mini-project [5%]
project [40%]
final [25% - and you must pass final to pass the course (60% score on final)]
Meet the Professor [MTP]: Meet with the professor for a few minutes in office hours, lab hours, or an appointment slot sometime during the quarter. This is a quick get-to-know-you discussion, and bring a question you have (e.g., about career, major, instructor, or course). This can be during lab hours, office hours, or in some appointment slots we will make available in the course calendar (see Team Page). MTP is not required, but is worth 1% extra credit.
Syllabus Quiz: There is an online syllabus quiz that is due by the end of Week 2. The syllabus quiz regards the mechanics of the course and the day 1 lecture. The university requires us to determine which students commence academic activity. Failure to certify academic activity through the syllabus quiz, may result in students being billed for unearned financial aid.
Pre-Class Reading Quizzes: You are expected to do the reading assigned for each class period, in advance. (No reading will be assigned on in-class quiz days.) Before each class, there will be a basic online quiz to check your preparation for class. You can take a quiz by 11:59pm on the day of the class.
Quizzes: There will be 4 in-class quizzes during the quarter. The quizzes are in essence a midterm spread out over several weeks. The in-class quizzes will be given every other Wednesday starting in week 3, in class. This gives you a week-by-week measure of how you are learning in the course, avoiding a costly surprise mid-quarter. A quiz may be rescheduled to another day due to extraordinary circumstances - campus closure, technology failure, etc. You are responsible for attending the quiz no matter what day it is actually offered. Points lost on the in-person quizzes can be made up through a process called corrections, up to half the points you lost.
Labs: There will be several labs throughout the quarter. Labs are performed in pairs. Labs are graded pass/fail (1/0), and are checked off by a TA face-to-face in lab (or possibly on Zoom). If you cannot make the lab time, or need more time than a couple hours to finish, you can complete the lab anytime before the end of the last lab hour of the week. Note that if too many students wait until the last lab hour of the week to get checked off, the TA/Tutor(s) may not have enough time to check everyone off. Note also that we have extended the lab time to provide more flexibility and contact time with the team.
Mini-Project: There will be a 2-week mini-project to be worked on starting in the beginning of the quarter to prepare everyone for the course project which starts in week 3. The mini-project is a warm-up to prepare create a small GUI application similar to a programming assignment from earlier courses. The mini-project may be worked on individually or in teams of two. You are highly encouraged to work on it with your partner from Lab 1.
Project: The project concerns constructing an application in two phases (each ending in a milestone) throughout the quarter. The application will be run (and tested) on a laptop computer. Each phase will be worth the same amount. Grading will be based on your application's run-time behavior, plus other project considerations (e.g., test cases, design, teamwork, etc.). We will require that some design-based work products be turned in prior to the end of each phase, which is when the code product is due. The project will start at the beginning of week 3, once we have a few key readings, lectures, and labs under our belts. There will be major project deadlines near the end of the 4th, 6th, 8th, and 10th weeks of the quarter, and minor deadlines (progress "check-ins") 5th and 9th weeks. It is strongly recommended that you not plan travel during the weekend before a major project deadline.
Requirement to follow Canvas, Piazza Forum, and UCSD E-Mail
Occasionally we may need to contact you regarding your homework or some pressing matter. We may use Piazza, and perhaps additionally e-mail. When we use e-mail, we will use your official UCSD e-mail address, as registered in TritonLink. You are responsible for reading course-related e-mails sent to your UCSD account in a timely manner.
We also post important announcements to the Fall 2023 CSE 110 Piazza Forums. You are responsible for keeping yourself subscribed to these forums so that you automatically receive forum posts as an e-mail. Note that there is a mobile client for Piazza. Assignments, lecture slides, etc. will be posted to the course's Canvas [at canvas.ucsd.edu]. You are responsible for all the content there.
In short, although we will often make announcements at the beginning of class for important matters, we don't have time to announce every significant course event, and Piazza serves as an official place for us to keep the class up to date.
Please see the Team page tab for additional information about communicating with the CSE 110 staff.
Textbooks, Canvas and other Resources
Canvas will maintain the weekly calendar of activities and the resources that go with them, including project resources. It also hosts online quizzes and grades. We will not always post on Piazza when something is added there, as many additions are regular and frequent (e.g., reading quizzes, lecture slides).
All of the required texts and most of the recommended texts are available online (on campus or via the UCSD VPN), up to only 20 readers at a time (so buy the books!). You should buy the first two required texts (HFSD and HFDP); these will be great references in the future, as well. The acronym tags listed in front of the readings below will be used to assign readings, which are required to be completed before class. From time to time we may also assign a web resource or video to watch.
NOTE: Page numbers may vary between paper and digital versions. Unless otherwise indicated, page numbers are from the paper edition. Please use Chapter and Section names to disambiguate as necessary.
Mandatory Class Texts
[HFSD] Dan Pilone, Russell Miles: Head First Software Development, O'Reilly Media, 2007 (or 2008 or 2009) [online]
[HFDP] Eric Freeman, Elisabeth Freeman, Kathy Sierra, Bert Bates: Head First Design Patterns, O'Reilly Media, 2004 [online]
Recommended Class Texts
[AND] Dawn Griffiths and David Griffiths. Head First Android Development, 3rd Edition, O'Reilly Media, 2022. [online]
(The 2nd Edition may be fine, but Android changes fast.)
[JIAN] Benjamin Evans and David Flanagan: Java in a Nutshell, 7th edition, O'Reilly, 2018 [online] (this is a great reference book, but if you have another, that's OK)
David Flanagan: Java Examples in a Nutshell, third edition, O'Reilly Media, 2004 [online]
Y. Daniel Liang, Introduction to Java Programming and Data Structures, Comprehensive Version (12th Edition), 2019. (any Java textbook is fine)