Course Notes - Jim Fawcett

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Notes:

Infrastructure for this site - the collection of its pages and linking structure - has been evolving for years, and that process continues. The goal of the site is to organize more than twenty years of notes, presentations, demonstration code and reusable code modules. The content is intended to supplement course lectures and you will need to make frequent references as you take courses from the sequence described here.

Jim Fawcett, Ph.D.

Associate Professor
CST 4-187, Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York 13244
(315) 443-3948, jfawcett@twcny.rr.com

Purpose of this Site

The site serves, for current and former students, as a portal into a sequence of software design courses I've taught for the last twenty years. This page links to descriptions of each of the courses and to folders containing presentations and code used as an integral part of these courses.

Using code and notes from this website:

• May I? - Yes, you may use any code and notes you find here for the classes covered by this site. It is my intent that you use whatever you find useful to help with your project assignments. For other courses you must check with the instructor of that course.

  There is a standard courtesy protocol you should follow (and should follow regardless of the source of the code). If you change anything, even a single character, put your name as the author and list the original author as the source. You thereby take responsibility for any breakage that you have caused to the code, and irate users will descend on you, not on the innocent original author. If you don't change anything then leave the original author citation.

• How? - For all current and former students, I am slowly putting zip archives in the various code folders, so that you can get the entire contents simply by using the "save target as" selection on the right-click context menu in Chrome, Internet Explorer, ... If you don't find a zip file and are a current or former student, send me an email and I will put the archive you want in its code folder.

Courses

I teach software design courses on a regular schedule, each offered once each year: Courses

Course Handouts

You will find a collection of directories on the college server to provide access for current and former students to selected notes, references, and code. Be warned that the code is discussed in class and much of it will have meaning, only to that class. However, feel free to browse, and download anything you wish: Handouts. You will find links and descriptions of much of the code here.

These folders have more content than a simple directory organization can properly support. This site is trying to provide a grand scheme for improved accessibility. The site is now in its fourteenth year and its contents and structure are reasonably current.

Internships and Master's Theses

The Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science has three programs: Computer Engineering, Computer Science, and Electrical Engineering. Master's Projects are no longer required, but in all of these programs you have the option of augmenting your Program of Study with internships and/or a Master's Thesis.

An internship is usually a full-time working experience that becomes part of your program of study. Many students seek internships over the summer break. When you complete an internship you document that with a report with your narrative about the assignments you've completed, the relationships you've had with people there, and a brief discussion of the academic merit of this experience.

If you are interested in carrying out some original Master's-level research follow this Yellow Brick Road.

Research and Development

Several students and I have recently started a small research group that focuses on software complexity, accessibility and reuse. For details refer to this Research page. This group consists of several Doctoral students, one or two students preparing Master's Theses under my direction, and occasionally a student doing an Independent Study. Some of this research extends into the classroom. For example, the CSE784 - Software Studio class has, over several years, developed projects that implement some of the software accessibility ideas we are exploring.

Ancient History

From 1978 through 1990 I taught, as an Adjunct, all Electrical Engineering courses, e.g., a variety of control system courses, digital signal processing, complex variables, linear vector spaces, etc. None of those notes are in electronic form, and so do not appear in this site.