CPSC 480 Software Engineering (SE) Fall 2026

News

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• Week 8 Class 15 Tue Oct 13 Posted: Oct 13

  After Class

  • Project 2 Feedback in GitHub, scores in Brightspace. If your iteration capacity was not correct, I strongly suggest that you figure out what is wrong before the Midterm Exam. Also, You are not allowed to exceed the iteration capacity.

  Announcements

  • Midterm Exam

  • Exercise 34: Team Text Match II

    Some observations regarding team collaboration and outcomes:

    • All team members should have a basic understanding of the technology used. In this case, for building programs: compiling, linking, options, etc. For Make, how to write rules. Some research might be needed, and while some team members may know more about particular points than others, everyone must have a fundamental understanding.
    • All changes must be verified by any means necessary. Many commits included modifications that would cause an error when make is run. Not every team member did this.
    • It was necessary to coordinate who was doing what. The team was in person at the same time, so this should have been straightforward. Consider what would happen if the team were distributed across different work schedules.
    • Allowing the team to only work on the program sequentially wastes ^(n-1)/_n of the potential. There was no reason why the two executables, textmatch and regexCountTest, couldn't be worked on in parallel. Declarative languages are easier to work on independently than other types of languages due to simpler structures. E.g., make is easier to work on independently than C++.
    • The team cannot afford even one member who makes unverified commits, submits changes that aren't aligned with other work, or has limited foundational knowledge.
  • Upcoming Changes to Sign-In: Passkeys and SMS Retirement

  Class

  • Notes: Build Files

  • Guide: Build Configurations

    • How many GCC optimization levels are there?
    • MSVC optimizations /O options (Optimize code)

  • Exercise 35: Build Configurations

    Fill out the Build Configurations table so that it reaches 82,944 different configurations.

    Upload to Brightspace.

  • HFSD Chapter 7

  • Exercise 36: Team Text Match III

    • build-files-f26-020
    • GNU Make
    • Make Rule Introduction What a rule looks like
    • Automatic Variables including $@, $<, and $^
• Exercise 36: Team Text Match III Posted: Oct 13

  In your repository the branch feedback in the file Feedback.md is a Claude (LLM) analysis of the team history for Exercise 34: Team Text Match II. I suggest viewing it at GitHub.

  Read over the analysis and think about what can be improved, not only about your current version of the code, but also about your process. Even if your process worked and you did well, consider how you can parallelize your development (instead of waiting while someone else makes changes).

  Follow the instructions for Exercise 34: Team Text Match II

  The targets are: make clean, make run, make test

  As before, this is due by the end of class. No commits outside of class.

• Midterm Exam Posted: Oct 08

  The Midterm Exam is Thursday, October 15, during our regular class time and classroom. It covers Chapters 1 - 6.5 of the Head First Software Development book, plus notes and in-class examples.

  • Big Bang approach to development - description, the path it takes, and disadvantages
  • Iterative approach to development - description, the path it takes, and advantages
  • Role of the customer/client
  • User Stories - all parts, description, creation, valid user story titles
  • Estimates and the Estimation Process, including all details of planning poker
  • Iteration and deadline planning
  • Utopian vs. Real-World days
  • Velocity - description, standard rate, what does it mean if velocity is higher or lower
  • Big Board - basics of what it shows and how developers use it
  • Good-enough design, SRP, DRY
  • Version control - jobs that it does, commit messages, branches (specific git information not on this midterm)
  • Build artifacts - Role and importance (code, configuration, tools), the general purpose of make and cmake. Given a Makefile, what would happen with specific targets. Given a project, draw a build dependency diagram.

  The exam has various problem types, including short answers, definitions, comparisons, creation of user stories, and planning. The question may require you to:

  • Explain a process or terminology of a process
  • Answer specific questions about parts of the process. E.g., "Explain why the recommendation is to come up with user stories whose estimates are 15 or less."
  • Explain what process and activities you would follow for a particular scenario

  It is a good idea to review the "Dumb Questions" and the answers.

  The questions are based on what we covered in the book, the exercises, and the projects. If I did not cover it in class, it is not on the exam.

  A calculator is not needed for any required math and, therefore, not permitted.

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