ITEC 307: Programming Practicum
Prerequisite: ITEC 220 or permission of instructor
Credit Hours: (1)
Provides practical experience writing programs to solve non-trivial, self-contained
problems. The course includes lectures teaching and reviewing standard algorithms
and data structures (e.g. searching a state space, and graph representations), discussion
on how they might need to be adapted to a particular task at hand, and supervised
lab time coding solutions. Problems are similar to those on programming contests,
although participating in such contests is not required for the class (nor vice versa).
This course may be taken more than once for credit. This course may not be used to
satisfy a major requirement, including technical and B.S. electives. This class cannot
contribute more than one hour of credit towards a minor within the Information Technology
department. A student can repeat ITEC 307 but cannot receive more than 4 credit hours.
Detailed Description of Content of Course
This course will provide skills for, and practice in, solving programming programs similar to those used in programming competitions. The course will include topics such as:
1. Data structures: practical use of container classes (w/ generics), graph representations,
and designing data representations for sample contest problems.
2. Demonstrate and perhaps implement algorithms dealing with
a. graphs and searching (shortest paths; applications of depth- and breadth-first
searching; using ad hoc pruning vs. brute force; topological sort)
b. generating permutations
c. numeric computing
d. 2-D geometry
e. simple parsing, and recursive-descent parsing
3. Dealing with issues such as floating-point arithmetic error, memory efficiency
and time efficiency, and I/O libraries.
4. Team programming tactics for a contest environment, including editing and debugging
tactics.
5. Programming tips (e.g. wrapping array and map lookups in a helper function which
is given a default result)
The exact topics and their order will vary from semester to semester, depending on
the sample contest questions used, and particular interest expressed by students.
For students who have been exposed to these topics in other courses, this course
will provide familiarity and/or mastery.
Detailed Description of Conduct of Course
Each weekly class meeting will involve discussion of a data structure or algorithm with respect to a particular problem, lab time spent implementing a solution (sometimes in teams, sometimes individually), and reviewing some actual implementations of previous weeks' problems. Each class will be 2 hours long, including supervised lab time.
Goals and Objectives of the Course
At the completion of this course, students will be able to take natural-language descriptions of programming-contest problems, and
1.Identify relevant abstract data types (e.g. graphs, trees, dictionaries)
2.Use standard, relevant container classes (with generics)
3.Identify concrete steps to solve the problem
4.Identify whether the problem is amenable to brute-force search
5.Quickly implement working programs solving simple problems
Assessment Measures
Students will be assessed on the successful completion of practice programming problems, both individually and team-based. Grading will also be based on attendance; for each class session missed, a student can instead solve an assigned problem from a previous programming contest.
Other Course Information
None.
Review and Approval
February 2, 2010 Initial course approval Art Carter, Chair
Revised: June 1, 2012