Getting Oriented
This textbook was authored for the CIS 400 - Object-Oriented Design, Implementation, and Testing course at Kansas State University. This front matter is specific to that course. If you are not enrolled in the course, please disregard this section.
This textbook was authored for the CIS 400 - Object-Oriented Design, Implementation, and Testing course at Kansas State University. This front matter is specific to that course. If you are not enrolled in the course, please disregard this section.
This course is taught in the “flipped” style. This means you will be watching videos and working through tutorials before you come to class. Your class sessions will be used for asking questions, working on and getting help with your projects, and taking exams.
Up to this point, you’ve likely done a lot of what I like to call “Baby Projects” - programming projects that are useful to demonstrate a concept or technique, but really don’t do anything beyond that. In contrast, we’ll be building a large, multi-project software solution to meet a real-world problem - the software needed to run a fast-food franchise chain!
We’ll be building this software iteratively over the entire semester! Each week, you’ll turn in one milestone as a GitHub release, just like you might do as a professional software developer. Because each milestone builds upon your prior work, it is critical that you keep up. Falling behind will very quickly tank your grade and impact your ability to learn and develop strong programming skills.
The course is organized into modules focused on a specific topic, accessible from the Canvas modules menu. Each module introduces one or more topics, and 1) covers the vocabulary and concepts with assigned readings, 2) puts those concepts into practice with guided tutorials, and 3) tasks you with applying those techniques you just practiced in a weekly milestone.
Most non-exam weeks will consist of two video-guided tutorials and the weekly milestone. The first module will be due by Monday, the second Tuesday, and the milestone on Friday. Each regular tutorial will take several hours to complete, and milestones can often take ten hours or more. You should plan your learning schedule accordingly.
The modules, and all of their associated assignments, are available through Canvas. You must complete each module item in order, and the prior week’s module must be finished before you can move on to those in the next week. Be aware that if you procrastinate and don’t start until Friday, it is unlikely that you will finish. Which means you will fall behind. You can very quickly find yourself in a hole you cannot climb out of. So time management is a critical skill you need to be developing.
Remember that in the CS Professional Program, a grade of less than C in a professional program course (like CIS 400) results in a “Warning of Unsatisfactory Progress.” This warning sticks with you the rest of your time in Computer Science at K-State. If you earn a second, similar grade, you will be dismissed from the CS Professional Program!
This textbook was authored for the CIS 400 - Object-Oriented Design, Implementation, and Testing course at Kansas State University. This front matter is specific to that course. If you are not enrolled in the course, please disregard this section.
As you work on the materials in this course, you may run into questions or problems and need assistance.
As mentioned before, the course sessions are one of the best time to get help with your assignments - during this time the instructor and TAs are scheduled to be available and on-hand in the computer lab.
For questions that crop up outside of class times, your first line of communication for this course is the departmental Discord server. If you have not yet signed into the course discord channel, or are not yet a Discord user, please visit https://discordbot.cs.ksu.edu. This assistant will link your K-State and Discord accounts and set your username for the server in accordance with K-State policy.
In addition to class channels, the Discord server hosts channels for student clubs, announcements, and general discussion. It is a good place to find information and socialize when you are unable to meet face-to-face.
Discord uses channels - the equivalent of chat rooms - to provide a place for related conversations. The channel for this course is #cis-400. It is the best place to go to get help with anything related to this course, from the tutorials and projects to issues with Visual Studio and Canvas. Before you post on Discord, use the search feature in the channel or scroll back in the chat history to make sure the question has not already been posted before. It will save everyone quite a bit of time.
Additionally, all course announcements will be made in the course channel (as well as through the Canvas announcements), so make a habit of checking the channel regularly.
The helping hand extra credit assignment provides bonus points for students who are caught helping other students in the class Discord channel.
Discord includes lots of useful features:
@ symbol with a username in a message to create a mention, which notifies that user immediately, i.e. @Nathan Bean (he/him) will alert me that you’ve made a post that mentions me.Shift+Enter for new lines in a multi-line message`var c = 4;`) to enclose code snippets to format them as programming code, and triple backtick marks to enclose multiline code comments (```[multiline code]```).The Discord class channel is the preferred communication medium for the course because 1) you will generally get a faster response than email, and 2) writing code in email is a terrible experience, both to write and to read. Discord’s support of markdown syntax makes including code comments much easier on both of us.
For general questions, asking them in the course channel will give you the best chance of a fast answer, from the course instructors, TAs, or your fellow students. And if you help a fellow student, you might get bonus points!
If you have a more personal question, however, you are welcome to email the instructor.
There are a few resources available to you that you should be aware of. First, if you have any issues working with K-State Canvas, K-State IT resources, or any other technology related to the delivery of the course, your first source of help is the K-State IT Helpdesk. They can easily be reached via email at helpdesk@ksu.edu. Beyond them, there are many online resources for using Canvas, all of which are linked in the resources section below the video. As a last resort, you may also want to post in Discord, but in most cases we may simply redirect you to the K-State helpdesk for assistance.
If you have issues with the technical content of the course, specifically related to completing the tutorials and projects, there are several resources available to you. First and foremost, make sure you consult the vast amount of material available in the course modules, including the links to resources. Usually, most answers you need can be found there.
If you are still stuck or unsure of where to go, the next best thing is to post your question on Discord, or review existing discussions for a possible answer. You can find the link to the left of this video. As discussed earlier, the instructors, TAs, and fellow students can all help answer your question quickly.
Of course, as another step you can always exercise your information-gathering skills and use online search tools such as Google to answer your question. While you are not allowed to search online for direct solutions to assignments or projects, you are more than welcome to use Google to access programming resources such as the Microsoft Developer Network, C# language documentation, WPF-tutorial.com, and other tutorials. I can definitely assure you that programmers working in industry are often using Google and other online resources to solve problems, so there is no reason why you shouldn’t start building that skill now.
Next, we have grading and administrative issues. This could include problems or mistakes in the grade you received on a project, missing course resources, or any concerns you have regarding the course and the conduct of myself and your peers. You’ll be interacting with us on a variety of online platforms and sometimes things happen that are inappropriate or offensive. There are lots of resources at K-State to help you with those situations. First and foremost, please DM me on Discord as soon as possible and let me know about your concern, if it is appropriate for me to be involved. If not, or if you’d rather talk with someone other than me about your issue, I encourage you to contact either your academic advisor, the CS department staff, College of Engineering Student Services, or the K-State Office of Student Life. Finally, if you have any concerns that you feel should be reported to K-State, you can do so at https://www.k-state.edu/report/. That site also has links to a large number of resources at K-State that you can use when you need help.
Finally, if you find any errors or omissions in the course content, or have suggestions for additional resources to include in the course, either post on Discord or email the instructor. There are some extra credit points available for helping to improve the course, so be on the lookout for anything that you feel could be changed or improved.
The Bug Bounty extra credit assignment gives points for finding errors in the course materials. Remember, your instructors are human, and do make mistakes! But we don’t want those occasional mistakes to trip you and your peers up in your learning efforts, so bringing them to our attention is appreciated.
So, in summary, Discord should always be your first stop when you have a question or run into a problem. For issues with Canvas or Visual Studio, you are also welcome to refer directly to the resources for those platforms. For questions specifically related to the projects, use Discord for sure. For grading questions and errors in the course content or any other issues, please email the instructor for assistance.
Our goal in this program is to make sure that you have the resources available to you to be successful. Please don’t be afraid to take advantage of them and ask questions whenever you want.
This textbook was authored for the CIS 400 - Object-Oriented Design, Implementation, and Testing course at Kansas State University. This front matter is specific to that course. If you are not enrolled in the course, please disregard this section.
The following is an outline of the topics we will be covering and when.
Please be aware that this schedule and topic list will likely undergo some revision during the semester.
Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
Week 4
Week 5
Week 6
Week 7
Week 8
Week 9
Week 10
Week 11
Week 12
Week 13
Week 14
Week 15
Week 16
This textbook was authored for the CIS 400 - Object-Oriented Design, Implementation, and Testing course at Kansas State University. This front matter is specific to that course. If you are not enrolled in the course, please disregard this section.
This course does not have a required print textbook. The resources presented in the modules are also organized into an online textbook that can be accessed at https://textbooks.cs.ksu.edu/cis400. You may find this a useful reference if you prefer a traditional textbook layout. Additionally, since the textbook exists outside of Canvas’ access control, you can continue to utilize it after the course ends.
Please note that the materials presented in Canvas have additional graded assignments and exercises worked into the reading order that do not appear in the online edition of the textbook. You are responsible for completing these!
The CIS 400 course textbook is only one of several textbooks authored by your instructors and made available on the departmental server. For example, your CIS 300 textbook is also available there for you to go back and review. You can access any of these textbooks at the site https://textbooks.cs.ksu.edu
If you are looking for additional resources to support your learning, a great resource that is available to Kansas State University students is the O’Riley For Higher Education digital library offered through the Kansas State University Library. These include electronic editions of thousands of popular textbooks as well as videos and tutorials. As of this writing, a search for object-orientation returns 13,237 results and C# returns 5,984 results. In particular, I would recommend these books:
There are likewise materials for other computer science topics you may have an interest in - it is a great resource for all your CS coursework. It costs you nothing (technically, your access was paid for by your tuition and fees), so you might as well make use of it!
This textbook was authored for the CIS 400 - Object-Oriented Design, Implementation, and Testing course at Kansas State University. This front matter is specific to that course. If you are not enrolled in the course, please disregard this section.
For this course, we will be using a number of software packages including:
These have been installed in the classroom lab, as well as all Engineering and Computer Science labs. It is strongly suggested that you install the same versions on your own development machines if you plan on working from home. Alternatively, you can remote desktop into a lab computer and use the installed software there.
Please note that the “Show whole line completions” option must be disabled in Visual Studio IntelliCode. You can disable it in Visual Studio by going to: Tools->Options, searching for “IntelliCode”, and unchecking the box that says “Show whole line completions”.
Using the whole line completions to help code the milestones is an academic honesty violation.
To use a remote desktop, you must first install a remote desktop client on your computer. Microsoft supplies a client for most platforms (Mac, Windows, etc.), which you can find links to and information about here.
The remote desktop server is behind a network firewall, so when accessing it from off-campus, you must be using the K-State Virtual Private Network (VPN). It has its own client that also must be installed. You can learn about K-State’s VPN and download the client on the K-State VPN Page
For remote desktop servers, you can use either those maintained by The Department of Computer Science or the College of Engineering.
If you would prefer to install the software on your own development machine, you can obtain no-cost copies of Microsoft Visual Studio Professional Edition and Microsoft Visio through Microsoft’s Azure Portal and signing in with your K-State eid and password.
After signing in, click the “Software” option in the left menu, and browse the available software for what you need.
The Visual Studio Community Edition is also available as a free download here. While not as full-featured as the Professional edition you can download through Azure Portal, it will be sufficient for the needs of this class.
Discord can be used through its web app at https://discord.com/webapp or you can download a native app for Windows, Linux, Mac, iOS, or Android devices.