Course Introduction

Writing Big Programs

While writing small programs can be a difficult task, programming becomes even harder as the size of the program increases. Complex software systems are comprised of millions of lines of code, organized in tens of thousands of files.

With such big programs, there are important questions:

How should the project be organized?
How should the work be split amongst multiple people?
What should go in each file?
How do you avoid duplicating work?
How should you keep track of bugs?
How do you make sure something which used to work doesn't break?
How should you document how it all works?

What We'll Be Doing

Continuing to work with Java:
- Exceptions
- Hash tables
- Multi-threading
- GUI programs
- Memory usage
Learning Object-Oriented Design:
- Classes, methods, and constructors
- Class diagrams
- Inheritance and interfaces
- Design patterns
General coding tools and skills:
- Debugging
- Structured testing
- Version control to share code
- Code documentation
- Reading and writing on development