Fall '21 Lecture Notes - Wed Aug 18 - Course Overview

• video on YouTube
• transcript of video

Course website

https://comp523.cs.unc.edu (about the most obvious URL possible, no?)

• See the official syllabus on the class website: https://comp523.cs.unc.edu
• The following notes do not replace the syllabus

Introductions - me

• My job title: Professor of the Practice
• No research area, but I run the UNC App Lab - I’ve been building apps for 15+ years now
• I live on 4+ acres north of Chapel Hill, with wife, 3 kids ages 8-4, 1 dog, 1 cat, (currently) 5 goats, and a variable number of chickens
• I enjoy reading, listening to music or podcasts, watching movies/TV, and running
• Favorite programming language: Clojure (pragmatic functional programming)
• Editor of choice: Spacemacs (fully-featured Vim-style editing in Emacs)

Introductions - you

Please visit PollEv.com/jeffterrell for a brief poll.

(Polls count for class participation credit so should not be considered optional.)

Classroom policies

• In-person + Zoom simulcast; either way is fine
• Recordings will be posted, but I expect synchronous attendance
• If you’re sick, stay home (and get tested)
• If I’m sick, I’ll stay home (and communicate a plan for holding class)
• Polls and in-class activities for both in-person and Zoom attenders
• These are required for class participation credit
• Please don’t distract others from learning with your voice, your phone, your screens, the Zoom chat, etc.
• To ask questions on Zoom: raise your hand or ask in the chat window
• I have refrained from posting the class Zoom link publicly; if you need it, email me

Why take COMP 523?

• Experience
  • Get practical experience building software with others
  • Super relevant for those intending a software development career
  • Put your project on your résumé to land a good job
• Meaning
  • Your client needs the software you’ll be building; this isn’t hypothetical
• Fun
  • Department chair Kevin Jeffay informally reports that many alumni he meets say that COMP 523 was their favorite course in UNC Computer Science
• Over two thirds of responding students last fall strongly agreed with the statement, “More CS students should take COMP 523.”

About COMP 523

This course is unusual:

• It prioritizes application over concepts
• It is highly collaborative
• It is more directly relevant to professional employment

Target audience: upper-level (junior and senior) CS majors

You will be building real software for real people in this course!

Key idea: you will team up in groups of (probably) 3 or (maybe) 4 for the duration of the semester to work on your project.

Poll: do you have teammates in mind already? https://pollev.com/jeffterrell

Learning objectives

At the end of the course, each student will have experienced all aspects of a software development project, including:

• working with a client to define goals and priorities
• designing a system
• scheduling and planning a multi-person project
• effective communications
• running meetings
• writing technical documentation
• preparing web content
• writing and testing code
• deploying the system
• public presentations

Collaboration

There are 3 types of people you will collaborate with this semester:

1. Your teammates
2. Your client: the one who wants the software you’ll build, perhaps a UNC professor or researcher or a local entrepreneur
3. Your mentor: somebody to help you along the way, either TA Vraj or a professional software engineer

More on mentors

• Note that mentors wear a management hat, reporting to me on completion of assignments (but they don’t assign grades).
• My hope is that the third-party aspect of mentors will help counter some of the shame that can accompany discussion of problems and failures. (We all fail! It’s OK!)
• Problems with your mentor? Talk to me.

Team/client/mentor assignments

• Next week during class, you’ll watch all the clients pitch their projects
• You’ll submit your team/project preferences by next Friday, 8am
• I’ll assign teams and clients based on your preferences, to be revealed next Friday during class
• Also next Friday: assigning mentors based (purely) on team availability

Meetings

• 1 required meeting each week with mentor
• I strongly recommend also scheduling a time to meet synchronously with your team
• Plus, at least one team member will need to meet at least occasionally with your client (I recommend bi-weekly, but it depends on their preference)
• Finding times for meetings can be challenging!
• But you have an ace in the hole: Friday class time
• All of you currently have that time free
• We won’t be meeting on Fridays after next week
• Please keep that time available for meetings
• Plan on meeting with your team, your mentor, or both during that time

Talks

• This is a communication intensive course!
• Besides the weekly meetings, your team will deliver 3 talks during the semester
• First, a 5-min midterm presentation: describe your project and show progress so far
• Second, a 20-min tech talk: teach some tool or technology to the class
• Third, a 9-min final presentation, including lessons learned
• Each team member must participate in each talk

Honor code

• Collaboration on your project and talks is expected and even required in COMP 523
• Collaboration of any sort on the quizzes is prohibited

Grading policies

Grading weights

• 10% for attendance and participation in class meetings (5%) and mentor meetings (5%)
• 10% for quizzes
• 15% for the tech talk
• 65% for the project

Grading cutoffs

• No rounding: 89.5% is a B+, not an A-
• Cutoff for A is 95.0%, not 93.0%

Attendance/participation grades

• 10% of course grade
• Half for class meetings
  • Participation in polls and in-class activities
  • Credit whether you get the answer right or wrong
  • Each class meeting weighted equally
  • Beware polls at beginning and end of class
• Half for mentor meetings
  • Did you show up? (half credit)
  • Were you on time? (half credit)
  • Each mentor meeting weighted equally
• Reasonable excuses will be approved in advance
• Job interviews and career fairs are not valid excuses (but I recommend skipping class for such things anyway :-) )

Quiz grades

• 10% of course grade
• My belief is that a complete lack of accountability for lecture content does you a disservice
• Quizzes will be worth 10% of your total grade
• Plan for now: a 10-minute quiz during class, every other week
• My aim: if (and only if) you paid attention during lectures, you should do OK without studying
• Quizzes will also include content from the required textbook
  • This is not difficult reading but should be a big help to your project work
  • See the calendar for when you should read chapters by
  • Debugging: The 9 Indispensable Rules for Finding Even the Most Elusive Software and Hardware Problems by David J. Agans

Project grades

• 65% of course grade
• Half for assignment grade
  • Were assignments completed on time (even if not perfect)?
  • More on assignments below
• Half for qualitative app grade
  • An app getting an A grade:
    • is well designed and attractive;
    • has an intuitive user interface;
    • is deployed;
    • includes at least the most important features;
    • has good test coverage (probably over 70%, although that can depend on the project), and
    • is free of obvious bugs and errors.
  • App getting a B might miss 2 of those criteria; A "C" app has significant problems
  • Note: app grading is intended to be somewhat lax, as a concession for the workload
• 1 project grade is assigned per team; however:

Individual grade multiplier

• Your individual project grade has an additional factor
• If you really slacked off and let your teammates down, your project grade will be multiplied by a factor as low as 0.7
• If you really went above and beyond (_while still collaborating well with teammates_), your project grade might be multiplied by 1.1 (rare)
• In order to get a 1, you must:
  • meet all role responsibilities
  • attend and participate in all meetings
  • commit to a reasonable amount of work
  • deliver on your commitments
  • help team members when appropriate
  • not preempt work from others nor denigrate their contribution
• In the past, most students had a multiplier of 1.0

Assignments

• Most weeks, a team assignment will be due
• Assignments are due (soft deadline) on Sunday night
• But won’t actually be checked until (hard deadline) your mentor meeting that week
• Remember: almost a third of your course grade (32.5%) is from on-time delivery of these assignments
• Note: better to deliver something mediocre on-time than something great late
• The structure of assignments is intended to be helpful and counter our shared tendency to procrastinate :-)
• You are encouraged to start on substantive project work early, however
• No assignments due this week; I’ll remind you later

Miscellaneous

Getting help

• No Piazza instance this time (it wasn’t useful last fall)
• Use your mentors! They’re here to help.
• For course or assignment related questions, first ask TA Vraj (patelvap@live.unc.edu). You can also ask me (terrell@cs.unc.edu) if needed.

Dealing with stress

• This can be a stressful course:
  • collaboration: choices of others can affect your grade
  • conflict: preferences and opinions can clash, esp. among your team
  • impact: you can disappoint not only yourself but also your team, your mentor, and your client
• If your stress or anxiety is interfering with your life or sleep in an unusual way, I encourage you to get help
• No shame: I’ve gotten lots of help from therapists in the past, and still see one regularly
• To get help, see the UNC Counseling And Psychological Services (CAPS) website.

Accessibility Resources and Services (ARS)

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill facilitates the implementation of reasonable accommodations, including resources and services, for students with disabilities, chronic medical conditions, a temporary disability or pregnancy complications resulting in barriers to fully accessing University courses, programs and activities.

Accommodations are determined through the Office of Accessibility Resources and Service (ARS) for individuals with documented qualifying disabilities in accordance with applicable state and federal laws. See the ARS website for contact information or email ars@unc.edu.

Title IX Resources

Any student who is impacted by discrimination, harassment, interpersonal (relationship) violence, sexual violence, sexual exploitation, or stalking is encouraged to seek resources on campus or in the community. Please contact the Director of Title IX Compliance (Adrienne Allison – Adrienne.allison@unc.edu), Report and Response Coordinators in the Equal Opportunity and Compliance Office (reportandresponse@unc.edu), Counseling and Psychological Services (confidential), or the Gender Violence Services Coordinators (gvsc@unc.edu; confidential) to discuss your specific needs. Additional resources are available at safe.unc.edu.

Dropping the course

Please don’t drop after teams are assigned! This will be a difficult situation for your assigned teammates.