Software Construction

Readings

Example code for some readings can be found on the 6.005 Github page.

Reading	Topics
1: Static Checking	Types Static Checking vs Dynamic Checking Arrays and Collections Iterating Methods Mutating Variables vs Reassigning Variables Documenting Assumptions
2: Basic Java	Snapshot Diagrams Java Collections Java API Documentation
3: Testing	Validation Test-first Programming Choosing Test Cases by Partitioning Blackbox and Whitebox Testing Documenting Testing Strategies Coverage Unit Testing and Stubs Automated Testing and Regression Testing
4: Code Review	Don’t Repeat Yourself Comments Where Needed Fail Fast Avoid Magic Numbers One Purpose for Each Variable Use Good Names Use Whitespace to Help the Reader Don’t Use Global Variables Methods Should Return Results, Not Print Them
5: Version Control	Inventing Version Control Git: Copy, Commit, Pull, Push, Merge
6: Specifications	Why Specifications? Behavioral Equivalence Specification Structure Null References What a Specification May Talk About Testing and Specifications Specifications for Mutating Methods Exceptions for Signaling Bugs Exceptions for Special Results Checked and Unchecked Exceptions Throwable Hierarchy Exception Design Considerations Abuse of Exceptions
7: Designing Specifications	Deterministic vs Undertermined Specs Declarative vs Operational Specs Stronger vs Weaker Specs Diagramming Specifications Designing Good Specifications Precondition or Postcondition? About Access Control About Static vs Instance Methods
8: Avoiding Debugging	First Defense: Making Bugs Impossible Second Defense: Localizing Bugs Assertions What to Assert What Not to Assert Incremental Development Modularity and Encapsulation
9: Mutability and Immutability	Mutability Risks of Mutation Aliasing is What Makes Mutation Risky Specifications for Mutating Methods Iterating Over Arrays and Lists Mutation Undermines an Iterator Mutation and Contracts Useful Implementation Types
10: Recursion	Choosing the Right Decomposition For a Problem Structure of Recursive Implementations Helper Methods Choosing the Right Recursive Subproblem Recursive Problem vs Recursive Data Reentrant Code When to Use Recursion Rather Than Iteration Common Mistakes in Recursive Implementations
11: Debugging	Reproduce the Bug Understand the Location and Cause of the Bug Fix the Bug
12: Abstract Data Types	What Abstraction Means Classifying Types and Operations Designing Abstract Type Representation Independence Realizing ADT Concepts in Java Testing and Abstract Data Type
13: Abstraction Functions and Rep Invariants	Invariants Rep Invariant and Abstraction Function Documenting the AF, RI, and Safety from Rep Exposure ADT Invariants Replace Preconditions
14: Interfaces	Interfaces Subtypes Example: MyString Example: Set Generic Interfaces Why Interfaces? Realizing ADT Concepts in Java, Part II
15: Equality	Three Ways to Regard Equality == vs. equals() Equality of Immutable Types The Object Contract Equality of Mutable Types The Final Rule for Equals() and hashCode()
16: Recursive Data Types	Recursive Functions Immutable Lists Recursive Datatype Definitions Functions Over Recursive Datatypes Tuning the Rep Null vs Empty Declared Type vs Actual Type Example: Boolean Formulas Writing a Program with ADTs Recipes for Programming with ADTs Example: Matrix Multiplication
17: Regular Expressions and Grammars	Grammars Regular Expressions
18: Parser Generators	Parser Generators An Antlr Grammar Generating the Parser Calling the Parser Traversing the Parse Tree Constructing an Abstract Syntax Tree Handling Errors
19: Concurrency	Two Models for Concurrent Programming Processes, Threads, Time-Slicing Example: Shared Memory Interleaving Race Condition Tweaking the Code Won’t Help Reordering Example: Message Passing Concurrency is Hard to Test and Debug
20: Thread Saftey	What Threadsafe Means Strategy 1: Confinement Strategy 2: Immutability Strategy 3: Using Threadsafe Data Types How to Make A Safety Argument
21: Sockets and Networking	Client/Server Design Pattern Network Sockets I/O Blocking Using Network Sockets Wire Protocols Testing Client/Server Code
22: Queues and Message-Passing	Two Models for Concurrency Message Passing with Threads Implementing Message Passing with Queues Stopping Thread Safety Arguments with Message Passing
23: Locks and Synchronization	Synchronization Deadlock Developing a ThreadSafe Abstract Data Type Locking Monitor Pattern Thread Safety Argument with Synchronization Atomic Operations Designing a Data Type for Concurrency Deadlock Rears its Ugly Head Goals of Concurrent Program Design Concurrency in Practice
24: Graphical User Interfaces	View Tree How the View Tree is Used Input Handling Separating Frontend from Backend Background Processing in Graphical User Interfaces
25: Map, Filter, Reduce	Abstracting Out Control Flow Map Functions as Values Filter Reduce Benefits of Abstracting Out Control First-class Functions in Java Map/Filter/Reduce in Java Higher-order Functions in Java
26: Little Languages	Representing Code as Data Building Languages to Solve Problems Music Language
27: Team Version Control	Git Workflow Viewing Commit History Graph of Commits Using Version Control as a Team