Programming and software development for engineers
CIVIL-127 / coefficient 3
Teacher(s): Alahi Alexandre Massoud, Menghrajani Alok Deshmukh
Language: English
Summary
This is a python programming course to build on top of students' existing programming skills and help write better software. The course will teach best practices, and introduce refactoring, fixing bugs, and implementing features in a large code base.
Content
- First 6 weeks
- Focus on Python (any feature available in 3.12.0 (latest stable) is in scope)
- Basic data types (str, int, float, bool, list, tuple, sets, dictionaries)
- Loops
- Control flows
- Objects
- Writing complete programs
- Tooling (IDE, Jupyter, etc.)
- Focus on Python (any feature available in 3.12.0 (latest stable) is in scope)
- Remaining 8 weeks
- Writing testable code / automated testing
- Unittesting
- Integration testing
- Dependency Injection
- Code coverage
- Test driven development
- Debugging techniques
- E.g., Julia Evan's debugging manifesto
- Software design ideas
- Patterns (gang of four)
- Shallow vs deep classes
- Refactoring techniques and pitfalls (multi-cursor, sed, codemod, semantic patch, etc.)
- git
- Understanding the core logic (DAG)
- Learning basic commands for the cli
- Git bisect (with a linear history)
- Git bisect with non-linear history
- Splitting large commits into smaller chunks
- Github
- How to fork a project
- How to track issues
- How to open a PR
- Github Actions (including CI/CD)
- Towards verification of program correctness
- Linters
- Type systems
- Proof systems
- Reproducibility
- Reproducible builds using Docker
- Reproducible experiments
- Cloud tools
- Discuss tools students are likely to use on AWS, GCP, or other clouds.
- Technical writing
- Writing technical documents
- Writing cleaner and more effective error messages
- Writing testable code / automated testing
For the exercices, given a large piece of code, the student will perform some refactoring tasks + implement new features. This would be similar to a new hire's experience when joining a software engineering team.
Keywords
Python, software development
Learning Prerequisites
Required courses
Basic knowledge of python
Learning Outcomes
By the end of the course, the student must be able to:
- Apply industry-standard best practices in Python programming.
- Design , build and maintain large software projects effectively.
- Develop clean, testable and easily reviewable code.
- Assess / Evaluate existing codebases to improve code quality and functionality.
- Test , debug and fix bugs in a systematic and efficient manner.
- Implement new features in existing large-scale software projects.
Transversal skills
- Evaluate one's own performance in the team, receive and respond appropriately to feedback.
- Respect relevant legal guidelines and ethical codes for the profession.
Teaching methods
Class in-person lectures + labs
Expected student activities
Attend to classs lectures/labs, complete weekly programming assignements and project.
Assessment methods
MCQ exam + grades programming assignements
Supervision
| Office hours | No |
| Assistants | Yes |
| Forum | Yes |
In the programs
- Semester: Spring
- Exam form: During the semester (summer session)
- Subject examined: Programming and software development for engineers
- Courses: 1 Hour(s) per week x 14 weeks
- TP: 2 Hour(s) per week x 14 weeks
- Type: mandatory