Course Schedule and Catalog

Department: Computer Science

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Lecture

Distribution Group: Distribution Group III

Credit Hours: 4

Description: PRINCIPLES OF COMPUTING & PROGRAMMING ***** Programming methodology and problem solving. This course teaches students the practical skills required to write and to modify programs. Historically, the course has been taught in Scheme, with an emphasis on functional programming. That version of the course will be offered in the Fall of 2004. In the Spring of 2005, the course will be taught in Java, with an emphasis on object-oriented programming. The content of COMP 212 shifts to match the version of 210 taught in the prior semester. A student may not receive credit for COMP 211 after taking COMP 210. Test driven approach to writing programs, which is the essence of the state-of art "agile" software engineering methodologies such as eXtreme Programming. OOP is the most pervasive paradigm for constructing modern software systems. Computer professionals and non-professionals alike will require a solid background in OOP to understand and effectively utilize these systems. This course is recommended for Engineering and other non-COMP majors, plus students who have not yet committed to a COMP major. This course is a pilot for the first semester of a new two-semester COMP 201/202 introduction to computing targeted at non-COMP non-COMP majors. Starting in Fall 2004, there will be two different introductory programming sequences: COMP 201/202 targeted at non-COMP majors and COMP 210/212 targeted at COMP majors. COMP 202 and (Scheme-based) COMP 210 will be offered in Fall 2004. Unlike the existing COMP 210/212 sequence, the new course sequence uses Java exclusively; it does not cover functional programming in Scheme. Students who take the new sequence and subsequently decide to major in COMP can enter the major by taking a short 1-hour course on functional programming in Scheme that will be offered each spring starting in Spring 2005. For further information, see http://www.rice.edu/~comp210 or contact Cory Cartwright (cork@rice.edu), Dung Nguyen (dxnguyen@rice.edu), or Stephen Wong (swong@rice.edu).