B15 Informatik 3 (Info3)

Website of Prof. Dr. Barne Kleinen, Professor for Media Informatics (Bachelor/Master) at HTW Berlin

Overview

Welcome!

Info 3 is the final module of the Info 1-3 series. In Info1, you learned programming, and the basics of object-oriented design of software. Info2 introduced you to advanced programming with data structures and algorithms. Info3 rounds that out by giving you insights into how to actually design and develop software with an eye for the overall picture.

Contents

The Studienordnung states the following goals for Info3:

Thus, Software Engineering, Software System Design, the UML and Software Design Patterns are set as topics. As one example of media system applications, we will look deeper into Web Application Development. Web Application Development has two main characteristics: it is a fast-changing environment, and agile development practices are pivotal. Furthermore, if web applications are successful, they become long-running software, thus the ability to maintain an old codebasis is also important. Therefore, we will also look into best practices to support agile software development (“Best Practices”) as well as designing for ease of change (“Clean Code” and “Advanced Object Oriented Design”).

Have a look at how this breaks down on this (tentative) Schedule.

Meetings and Due Dates

The class consists of 2x2h of lectures and 2h of lab every week. Lab exercises run for 2 weeks - there are two labs for each assignment. This allows you to start within the first lab, get most of the work done during the week and come back with your questions in the second lab. There will be quizzes about the lab topics in the lab.

Due dates:

  • Lab Reports: Monday 22:00 before the next lab with a new assignment.

Grades

Your grade in Info3 will be a weighted mixture of the evaluated graded elements of the course (optionally) tests on lab subjects and the exam. The partial grades will be assessed as follows and then graded according to the [Grading Scale]({{ site.BaseURL }}/studies/grading/grading-scale):

Option 1: only Exam

  • Exam 100%
  • all 7 lab reports need to be turned in before the exam

Option 2: Lab Quizzes & Exam

  • Exam 50%
  • Lab Quizzes: 50%
  • all 7 lab reports need to be turned in before the exam

In each lab with a new assignment, which happens to be the same as the lab after the report deadline, there will be a short moodle quizz about the subjects of the lab. If you worked on the lab report it should be fairly easy to answer.

You don’t have to participate in the quizzes, but they are a chance to earn points ahead of the exam just as you could formerly with graded lab reports.

You don’t have to decide which Option you choose, I will automatically pick the one that results in the better grade for you at the end of the semester.

If you miss a quizz

It’s not possible to do the quizz later or from home - for the simple reason that you would have an advantage as you could either use other material if at home or have the opportunity to gain information about the quizz contents if doing it at a later time.

If you miss a quizz, you have the opportunity to attend an extra quizz at the end of the semester. This way you have a chance to get all the points even though you / your kid / your grandma catched the flu for a week.

Lab Reports

As in Info1 and Info2, you need to write Lab Reports. More info about the Lab Reports can be found on the Labs page.

Exam

There will be a 2-hour online examination at the end of the semester. The exam will be an on-line exam with two parts, a multiple-choice part and an essay / programming part.

Course Literature

There is no textbook for this class. Here are the main books this class is based upon. You’ll don’t need to buy them for this class - there’s pl enty of information online. Some of them can be found in the library. You might want to buy them, though, as these are books that will not be outdated next year. One of them is even the same age as some of you.

ReferenceLink
Ian Sommerville (2010). Software Engineering [9th edition]. Prentice Hall.Available o Amazon
Sandi Metz: Practical Object Oriented Design in Ruby: An Agile Primer. Addison Wesley, 2012.Book Website
Robert C. Martin: Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship. Prentice Hall, 2008.Homepage der Clean-Code Initiative (german)
Robert C. Martin and Micah Martin: Agile Principles, Patterns, and Practices in C#. Prentice Hall, 2006SOLID Principles
Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson, John Vlissides: Design Patterns. Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software. Addison-Wesley, 1994.Wikipedia is pretty good for them.
Martin Fowler: Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture. Addison-Wesley, 2002.EAA Website
Armando Fox, David Patterson: Engineering Software as a Service: An Agile Approach Using Cloud Computing.Available on Amazon