Late assessments are not accepted in this unit unless a Special Consideration has been submitted and approved.

CLASSES

Each week of COMP2000 has up to two hours of online lectures and a two-hour practical class. For details of days, times and rooms, consult the University timetables webpage (http://www.timetables.mq.edu.au). Practical classes commence in Week 1 and are held in the 4RPD Computer Laboratories computer laboratories for on-campus classes and in zoom rooms for online classes (links published in iLearn).

Students choosing online practicals are expected to have camera, microphone, and screen sharing capabilities for all classes.  If you don't have access to those, please choose an on-campus class.

In all cases students are expected to do significant preparatory work, readings and exercises before attending classes.

REQUIRED AND RECOMMENDED TEXTS AND/OR MATERIALS

The required text for the unit is (available online via the Macquarie University Library, see below):

• Head First Design Patterns by Eric T Freeman, Elisabeth Robson, Bert Bates and Kathy Sierra, O'Rielly Media, October 2004 (ISBN:978-0-596-00712-6) 

There will be no lecture notes provided, all examinable material is given in course readings and the textbook.  Students are required to study this material and answer preparatory questions before class.

The Macquarie library contains many books on object-oriented programming in general, and on programming specifically in Java, that you may want to use to supplement the text and lecture notes.

One particularly useful service that the library provides you with is access to many Java related titles online via the Safari Books Online (http://proquest.safaribooksonline.com/) service. Using this service, which you can only access from a machine connected to the University network, you might like to have a look at the following Java titles:

1. Head First Design Patterns by Eric T Freeman, Elisabeth Robson, Bert Bates and Kathy Sierra, O'Rielly Media, October 2004 (ISBN:978-0-596-00712-6) 
2. Learning Java, 3rd Edition by Jonathan Knudsen; Patrick Niemeyer, ISBN: 978-0-596-00873-4
3. Java in a Nutshell, 5th Edition by David Flanagan, ISBN: 978-0-596-00773-7
4. Java Examples in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition by David Flanagan, ISBN: 978-0-596-00620-4 The web itself is an ideal source of Java information, and from time to time we will be posting useful links on the COMP2000 iLearn site. Two particularly useful resources are:
5. Thinking in Java by Bruce Eckel, a free version of the 3rd edition of this pretty comprehensive book is available for download from http://www.mindview.net/Books/TIJ/ and its 4th edition, which is updated for use with Java 5 and 6, is available for $25 from http://mindview.net/Books/TIJ4.
6. The official Java Tutorial http://download.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/ which is a comprehensive resource providing trails covering topics ranging from the basics of Java programming to more advanced subjects like GUI development, Generics, Class Reflection, Sound, Graphics, Network Programming and Concurrency

UNIT WEBPAGE AND TECHNOLOGY USED AND REQUIRED

Online Resources

COMP2000 will make extensive use of the iLearn system for delivery of class materials, discussion boards, real time chat, submission of work and access to marks and feedback. Students should check the iLearn site (http://ilearn.mq.edu.au) regularly for unit updates.

Questions and general queries regarding the content of this unit, its tutorials or practicals should be posted to the appropriate discussion board on the COMP2000 iLearn site. In particular, any questions which are of interest to all students in this unit should be posted to one of these discussion boards, so that everyone can benefit from the answers.

Echo360

Audio and screen video recordings of the lectures will be made available online via Echo360. A link to these recordings will be provided on the iLearn site for this unit

Technology Used and Required

The practical work in this unit involves programming in Java (https://www.java.com) using the Microsoft Visual Studio Code IDE (https://code.visualstudio.com). We will also be using a distributed version control system called Git to access shared code repositories hosted on the BitBucket website (https://bitbucket.org).

This software is already installed for you in the computing labs located in 4 Research Park Drive and is also available to download, install and use for free on your own machine(s). It should work equally well on Mac OSX, Linux or Microsoft Windows platforms.

Tools and libraries to support debugging, automated testing, GUI development and so forth will be introduced and used as the semester progresses. When that occurs you will be provided with full instructions in lectures on how to install and use each one.