🎉 Thanks for the term

Posted by Yuchao Jiang 🍄 Wednesday 13 December 2023, 02:18:55 PM.

Hi everyone!

I hope you're having a nice beginning to your holiday period. I am emailing for just a few things!

In terms of your performance this term - students overall did an amazing job in the projects and labs. You should all be really proud of what you've managed to learn and achieve this term. I really enjoyed teaching this amazing cohort.

You'll receive your final mark for the term tomorrow. If you are concerned that your individual project may have been marked incorrectly or unfairly, you can complete this form for us to review it . Please complete it no later than 21/12/2023 . This form is for individual project marks only, if you have concerns with your major project marks, please contact your tutor and/or the course email (cs1531@cse.unsw.edu.au). Please note that reviews of your marks may result in your mark going up or down depending on the review. I will be on annual leave after tomorrow, but our teaching team will get back to you by the end of this year .

In terms of MyExperience, we'll receive your feedback tomorrow. Since the individual project started after the myExperience survey was due, if you have any feedback on the individual project, please let us know by filling in this quick form . We really appreciate your feedback.

Thanks again to the incredible team of tutors and admins. They keep the lights on and everything running wonderfully. I would also like to acknowledge Hayden's contributions to the course - our slides were edited based on Hayden's slides from a previous term and his contributions to the project.

Other than that, it's been a pleasure to meet so many of you this term. For those I haven't met, I hope to meet you in the future. Add me on LinkedIn .

Thanks everyone!

🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄

Information about your final assessment (Individual Project) starting tomorrow

Posted by Yuchao Jiang 🍄 Wednesday 22 November 2023, 12:18:04 PM, last modified Wednesday 22 November 2023, 12:19:36 PM.

Hi everyone,

Please read this notice.

For your individual project tomorrow, we will communicate with you via EdStem forum posts. An example post is here . If you have not already signed up for the forum, please do - we will need you to. We will not communicate with you via Webcms3 notices.

All EdStem forum posts will also be delivered as an email to your UNSW email inbox. If there are issues with EdStem, we will email you directly via your UNSW Email.

We will release your tasks for this project at 9 am tomorrow by pushing an update on the central spec . Please read the codebase and the current spec before 9 am tomorrow ( LINKS HERE ).

DO NOT spam refresh the page at 9 am - we don't control the GitLab servers, so can't do much if people overload it. To avoid traffic jams with GitLab when submitting, try to submit earlier than 5 pm. But you can still push updates anytime before 5 pm.

Remember, the spec is centrally shared with everyone in this cohort, but you complete your work on your personal assessment repo! This distinction is really important, so please take a moment to familiarise yourself with the codebase and the spec.

If you have any other questions, please post on the forum.

Good luck with the individual project!

💆🏼‍♂️ End of week 10 updates

Posted by Yuchao Jiang 🍄 Friday 17 November 2023, 10:46:50 PM.

Hi everyone!

Huge congrats to those who have submitted their iteration 3! It's a big achievement 🏆. For those still working on the project, all the best for you 🫶.

It's been incredible seeing everyone pick up the work and tackle the challenge. The term has flown by. It's crazy how much you've all managed to learn this term.

🍹PEER REVIEW ITER3 - you have only a few days to complete.

Everyone is required to complete their peer review for iteration 3. This is invaluable feedback for your tutor to track how your group is performing together. You need to complete this by 9am Monday 20th Nov!

FILL IT OUT NOW!!

🍄 Iteration 3 Wrap-up

• If you were affected by GitLab not loading, no stress at all, You will NOT be penalised at all for being unable to push. For more details, look at this forum post . We are here to support you, not out to punish you :).
• We will release your automarking results on Tuesday of week 11 (21st of Nov) by pushing an iter3-result branch. Your iteration 3 marks will be released later after our tutors finish marking. We are releasing this automarking earlier for iter3 so that you can start considering if you want a rerun.
• If you would like to talk to your tutor about reruns (as specified for the major project), you have until the end of 29th of Nov to produce the new commit and email your tutor the branch name that you'd like to re-run. This is the cut-off for re-runs for T3. This doesn't mean they have to have it resolved by the end of 29th of Nov, but we need you to at least start the conversation.

🐢 Individual project

As we mentioned on our course website , there are two parts to this individual project: (1) read the codebase with the provided instructions (Saturday of week 10 - Wednesday of week 11) and (2) complete a one-day project based on the codebase (Thursday of week 11 9 am-5 pm).

We will release (1) the individual project codebase and (2) the spec this Saturday morning. The spec at this stage will be instructions on understanding the codebase and preparing for the Thursday project. We will release the specs about the one-day project next Thursday at 9 am.

You will find the links on the course website in the tab " Individual Project - Links " once released. Remember, the spec is centrally shared with everyone in this cohort, but you complete your work on your personal assessment repo! This distinction is important, so please take a moment to familiarise yourself with the spec once released. If you have any questions, please feel free to post on the forum.

If you have an ELP about assessments, you will receive an email from us this weekend on your adjustments to the one-day project.

Have a great weekend - Rest easy, it's been a long week. 😊

Guest lecture today - Fuzz Testing: A testing strategy at Google and Microsoft

Posted by Yuchao Jiang 🍄 Friday 17 November 2023, 07:55:02 AM.

Hi Everyone,

Today, we will have our very last lecture of COMP1531 this term. We are excited to inform you that we invited Dr. Yuekang Li to give us a talk on Fuzz Testing.

Yuekang Li is currently a lecturer at UNSW (joined in August 2023). With the techniques Yuekang has developed, he has helped the open-source community and companies find hundreds of bugs in real-world software, including some widely used products.

The topic today is Fuzz Testing: The Aesthetics of Violence. Fuzz testing or fuzzing is a very popular and practical software testing technique for finding vulnerabilities. Big corporations such as Google and Microsoft have dedicated fuzzing team to secure their product. This talk will cover the basic concepts, research trends, and industry practices of fuzz testing.

We will try to keep the lecture short and focus on the most important aspects, so that you can come back to work on your iteration 3 after the lecture.

Looking forward to seeing you online and in-person!

Online link to the industry guest lecture today at 2pm

Posted by Yuchao Jiang 🍄 Tuesday 14 November 2023, 01:05:28 PM.

Hi everyone,

We will have our industry guest lecture from Atlassian from 2 to 4 pm. Please join us at https://atlassian.zoom.us/j/94913710791?pwd=dk4wRVQweEN3MVlWUFNqbklLWVBHZz09 .

There will be a Q&A at the end if you have any questions about security, internships, grad roles, or Atlassian in general! You are welcome to bring your UNSW friends, whether or not they are enrolled in COMP1531.

🙉 End of week 9 updates

Posted by Yuchao Jiang 🍄 Sunday 12 November 2023, 05:50:02 PM.

Hi everyone!

We're wrapping up week 9 - keep your heads down and keep focused. No more new content. Make this weekend count, and keep steady next week. Updates below:

🐢 General Updates and reminders

Some key updates and reminders for you:

• Lab08 marking and solutions released.
• Lab08 marks are now viewable on sturec/give
• Lab09 is due on Tuesday of Week 10 at 5:00pm.

🦃 Iteration 3 - Leaderboard & 1 week to go

Iteration 3 is due on Friday of week 10. Super soon. Good luck - you'll figure it out. Make good use of the help sessions, forum, tutorials and labs. We will do our best to support you.

We will run the leaderboard on the Monday, Wednesday, and Friday of week 10. Don't forget we will take the commit you made at around 10 pm the night before the leaderboard runs, so if you want it to run on that day, commit it in time!

This is a reminder to try to merge your code earlier before the deadline to avoid traffic jams with GitLab. The forum and help sessions will also be crowded on Thursday and Friday, although we've added more help sessions and tutors next week. So, please plan ahead :).

💡Individual project

We released more details about the individual project on our course website HERE . You will find the links to the individual project HERE . We also explained how the individual project will run in our lecture this week ( HERE is the link to the recordings).

🎩 MyExperience survey

Filling out MyExperience is one of the most helpful things you can do for the teaching team in COMP1531. We really wish to listen to and capture your experience with the aim of understanding and acting upon it. The higher the response rate, the more robust the insights. You will need to complete the survey before starting on your individual project.

Please cheer us up if you think we are doing well and help us improve if you think we can do better!

🍄 Lectures in week10

We will have two bonus lectures in week 10. We will have an industry lecture from Atlassian on Tuesday and another bonus lecture on Friday.

Have a great weekend - so close! 1 week to go until the bulk of it's over :)

Lab09 is released

Posted by Yuchao Jiang 🍄 Tuesday 07 November 2023, 11:45:52 AM, last modified Tuesday 07 November 2023, 12:39:00 PM.

Hello again,

Lab09 is released. You will need to approve the merge request for lab09_deploy. Please note that the deadline for lab09 is Week 10 Tuesday 5:00 pm.

Also, in case if you are not aware yet, we have mentioned in the course outline that "There are 12 marks attainable across the labs, but you only need to score 10 out of 12 to achieve the full 10% for the lab marking component. This means you can skip a couple of lab questions throughout the term". 😉😉😉

Good luck with everything! See you this afternoon at the lecture online and in-person!

Industry Guest Lecture (Atlassian) - Hack-proof your projects

Posted by Yuchao Jiang 🍄 Tuesday 07 November 2023, 10:26:32 AM, last modified Tuesday 14 November 2023, 01:11:11 PM.

Hello everyone,

We are very excited to announce that we will have an industry guest lecture next Tuesday from Atlassian.

Our guest speaker, Giuliana, is a Security Engineer at Atlassian, specialising in Penetration testing. This lecture will introduce secure coding practices drawing from the standards at Atlassian, and help you become better software engineers (so you won’t be that intern that causes an incident)!

There will be a Q&A at the end if you’ve got any questions about security, internships, grad roles or Atlassian generally!

The lecture will be held online only at 2-4 p.m. on 14th Nov . HERE is the link to join the lecture. You are welcome to join with your UNSW friends no matter if they are enrolled in COMP1531.

🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳

🦄 End of week 8 updates

Posted by Yuchao Jiang 🍄 Sunday 05 November 2023, 07:47:10 PM, last modified Sunday 05 November 2023, 08:10:36 PM.

Hi everyone,

Welcome to the end of week 8. Things are starting to wrap up soon! After Lab08 we will only have lab09_deploy, the tutorials start to get quite light, the lecture content is also quite light. Buckle down and get through the next 14 days and we'll be there in no time.

🐢 General Updates and reminders

Some key updates and reminders for you:

• Lab08 is due on Monday (with only lab09 left).
• Tutorial 8 solutions have been released.

🍉 Iteration 2 results

Your iteration 2 marks and comments will be made available to you on the sturec page of Webcms3 at about midnight today which you can check tomorrow. If you have any follow-up questions about your grades after this time, please email your tutor directly .

More details about your automarking result will be pushed to your repo on a branch that is called iter2-results tonight. If you would like a re-run (as per the spec) you must start this conversation with your tutor within 7 days of the results release.

It's important to remember that these marks are tentative, and whilst very rare, are still subject to change as new information comes to light.

⚠️ Individual project

I know that I've mentioned this in the weekly notices three times, but I still want to emphasize again: Please ensure that you are available on Thursday of week 11 to work on your individual project.

Only 2 weeks to go until you've completed 70% of the course. You're on the home stretch, and the best part about this period of the course is you're more equipped than ever to tackle the challenges in front of you. Let's keep going.

🌻 End of week 7 updates

Posted by Yuchao Jiang 🍄 Monday 30 October 2023, 05:28:36 AM.

Hi everyone!

Hope you had a good break in the weekend.

🐢 General Updates and reminders

Some key updates and reminders for you:

• Lab 5 marks have been released.
• There is no lab due on Monday, yay!

🍹PEER REVIEW ITER2

Everyone is required to complete their peer review for iteration 2. This is invaluable feedback for your tutor to track how your group is performing together.

You need to complete your peer review by Monday 17:00 of week 8.

FILL IT OUT NOW!!

🦃 Iteration 3

Iteration 3 has been released! Similar to iteration 2, you have 3 weeks to complete it before it's due.

Iteration 3, for most of you, will be a tone-down from iteration 2. It will be a chunk more work to do, but with a much smaller set of new concepts.

👀 Individual project

Please plan ahead and ensure that you are available on Thursday of week 11 to work on the individual project! This is the third time that we send out this note. You can find more information about the individual project in the "end of week 4 notice" that we sent before.

🍉 Lecture in week 8

Same as week 7, Hayden will lecture online and we will project the livestream in the lecture theatre.

We're getting closer to the end of the journey.

❄️ End of week 6 updates

Posted by Yuchao Jiang 🍄 Friday 20 October 2023, 07:35:11 PM.

Hi everyone!

We hope your flex week is going well. Very straightforward update this week.

🦃 Iteration 2

Iteration 2 is due on Friday of week 7. One week! Keep working and use the course staff as necessary :)

Very important reminders:

• Please put all of the javascript or typescript files you work in inside the src folder or a subdirectory within the src folder.
• Please check the change log/merge requests for your project. Just so you know – a few minor changes have been made that will require your attention. You are encouraged to check it each day you work on it !!!

We will be running the leaderboard on week 7. Remember to check it out! You will need to select iteration 2 from the drop-down next week.

⚠️ Lectures in Week 7

We will have a guest lecturer this week -- Hayden Smith . Hayden will lecture online, but we will project the livestream video in the lecture theatre so that you can still come to the theatre.

Enjoy the rest of the flex week(end)!

🎩 (End of) Week 5 updates

Posted by Yuchao Jiang 🍄 Wednesday 11 October 2023, 09:18:17 PM, last modified Saturday 18 November 2023, 02:43:10 PM.

Hey everyone!

This week 5 update comes a bit early because there are updates that we think you might want to know earlier.

1. We rolled out a merge request for your project iteration 2 today. You should merge this in. Nothing major has been changed. We elaborated in more detail about 'sessions', fixed minor system updates and removed a 403 error from Swagger. You should check for merge requests regularly every day or two.
2. To provide you with more and earlier support on iteration 2 so that you can have a strong start on iteration 2, we attached a video where iteration 2 was discussed and explained last term. Note that there are minor changes this term and you will need to refer to the spec. Get started on iteration 2 as early as possible!
3. We had a lot of students asking to have lab05 due on Sunday instead of Saturday in the Tuesday lecture. We understand that this lab is due earlier than the others. However, as per university policy, we cannot have deadlines in flexi week, and if we have it due in week 7, it will delay a lot of groups working on iteration 2. So, to accommodate your feedback/requests, we now allow submission of lab05 by Week 5 Sunday 10:00 pm without any penalty . Yeah!
4. Please ensure that you are available for the individual project on the Thursday of week 11! You can find more details in the end of week 4 udpates that we sent last week.

🐢General Updates and reminders

Some key updates and reminders for you:

• Lab 4 marks have been released on the grade page .
• Tutorial 5 solutions will be released by the end of week 5.
• By the end of week 5, you need to have watched week 4 lectures.
• By the end of flex week, you need to have watched week 5 lectures.
• Make a strong start on iteration 2 this weekend if you haven't. We see a lot of students fall behind between iteration 1 and 2. Groups who haven't started by Monday morning of week 6 usually experience some struggles, and groups who don't start by the middle of week 6 weekend usually experience a lot of struggles.

👀 Lectures in week 7 & 8

I will stay available for emails and on the forum for your course enquiries in those weeks!

In this Friday's lecture, before I leave, we will start talking about 🎨 Design, which is a very exciting topic in software engineering!

🍉 Iteration 1 results

Your iteration 1 marks and comments will be made available to you on Webcms3 by this end of this week. If they are not available, your tutor will email you with an update.

Your marks will be able to be found on sturec . If you have any follow-up questions about your grades after this time, please email your tutor directly.

More details about your automarking result will be pushed on Sunday evening to your repo on a branch that should be called iter1-results. If you would like a re-run (as per the spec) you must start this conversation with your tutor within 7 days of the results release.

🌈 Enjoy your flex week

Flex week is right around the corner! We're excited for you all to have a week without any classes.

-- Yuchao

🌷 End of week 4 updates (important peer review)

Posted by Yuchao Jiang 🍄 Friday 06 October 2023, 02:29:19 PM, last modified Friday 06 October 2023, 02:32:17 PM.

Hi everyone!

Iteration 1 is due tonight. Congratulations to everyone for their amazing work. We've seen some tentative marks, and a lot of groups have done very well. For the groups that struggled a little more, keep your chin up and take on the lessons for the next iteration. The last two iterations of the course are three weeks instead of two. That breathing room will help.

Don't forget to catch up and ensure you're on top of the week 4 lectures by the end of the weekend.

We'll give you the quick last for the lower-attention-span people:

• Lab5 is due earlier than normal - Week 5 Saturday 10:00 pm.
• Tutorial 4 solutions and lab3 marks have been released
• Iteration 1 peer review is due 9 am Monday 9th Oct, and Iteration 2 is being released on Saturday night.

🐢General Updates and reminders

Some key updates and reminders for you:

• Tutorial 4 solutions have been released
• Lab 4 is due on Monday, week 5, at 5pm.
• Lab 5 is due Saturday, week 5 at 10pm ! This has an earlier due date.. please keep an eye on it*. This is due to week 6 being a flexible week, and we want to avoid having deadlines in week 6. We only have one lab in lab05.
• Lab 3 marks have been released on grades page . Remember to read the lab mark guide .

🍹PEER REVIEW ITER1 - you have only a few days to complete.

Everyone is required to complete their first peer review for iteration 1. This is invaluable feedback for your tutor to track how your group is performing together.

The peer review deadline is 9am Monday 9th Oct. You have a few days to complete the survey. It should be quick.

FILL IT OUT NOW!!

🔥 Iteration 2 released on Saturday night

Keep an eye out for it and get started next week.

Remember that iteration 2 is where you will need topics from lectures:

• Static Verification
• Linting
• Advanced Functions
• HTTP Servers
• Persistence (next week) - but this is easy

You can find the lecture slides and videos here and the lecture code here .

The advice is to start iteration 2 early next week. The very beginning of it (particularly in adjusting to Typescript + Linting + HTTP) will feel like a hurdle. But focus on getting over that hurdle to get into the more exciting stuff.

✨Iteration 1 marks

Your iteration 1 marks will be released next Friday!

👀 Individual project

As we mentioned in the course outline and the course overview lecture, we do not have an exam in COMP1531 this term. Instead, we have an individual project at the end of the term in week 11, which is worth 30% of the course marks. So, everything is done before the exam period, yeah!

We will give you a code base to read after we finish the major project at the end of week 10. You will have about 5 days to read the codebase till the Thursday of week 11. On that Thursday, you will work on a one-day project to add features to the codebases and make changes to the codebase. Please plan ahead and ensure that you are available on Thursday of week 11 to work on the individual project! This individual project works very similar to your major project, but much smaller in scale.

A reminder that this weekend (Sunday) is the last day you can drop the course and make it as if your enrollment never happened. If you do drop the course, just shoot your tutor or team members a quick email letting them know (1 minute of your time saves everyone a bit of pain). Since you've dropped right after an iteration, everyone will be fine, and tutors will figure things out :)

Other than that, please have an amazing weekend and look after yourselves! Stay steady; we still have a bit of term to go.

✈️ End of week 3 updates + lab03 extension

Posted by Yuchao Jiang 🍄 Sunday 01 October 2023, 10:19:10 PM.

Hi everyone!

Welcome to the end of week 3. Nearly a third of the way through the course. Keep it up!!

Please don't forget to stay up to date with the lectures. Before our next Tuesday lecture, you should have watched all of week 1, 2, and 3 lectures. A reminder that last term, we found that the majority of students who struggled with the course had also fallen behind on lectures :(

🐢General Updates and reminders

Some key updates and reminders for you:

• Tutorial 3 solutions have been released.
• [Extension] Lab 3 is due on Week 4 Tuesday at 8:00 am (i.e. early morning of 03.10.2023). Solutions will be released on the solution branch at that time.
  • Due to the public holiday on Monday 2nd of October 2023, the lab deadline has been extended by 15 hours.

😻 Lab02 Marks

Your lab02 has been marked, and your marks can be seen on the grades page .

You can read our detailed info about looking at your lab marks here - this is a very useful guide !! If you have any issues, you can follow up with your lab assistant during your lab time during week 4.

🍉 Iteration 0 results

Your iteration 0 marks and comments will be made available to you on the grades page of Webcms3 tonight. If you have any follow-up questions about your grades, please email your tutor directly.

🦃 Iteration 1 - Leaderboard & 1 week to go

Iteration 1 is due on the Friday of week 4. If you haven't yet started, get to it!

We will be running the leaderboard (as per section 8.2 in the spec) to have your tentative marks available on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday of week 4. The leaderboard will be updated around lunchtime - assume at 12 p.m. The leaderboard gives you a chance to sanity check your automark (without knowing the details of what you did right and wrong), and is just a bit of fun.

You will be able to access the leaderboard here on Monday .

🌈 Next week

In week 4, the content we learn will discuss linting, advanced Javascript function features and web servers.

I hope everyone is having a good long weekend! See you next Tuesday :)

🦓 End of week 2 updates

Posted by Yuchao Jiang 🍄 Friday 22 September 2023, 11:28:10 PM, last modified Friday 22 September 2023, 11:29:35 PM.

Hi everyone!

We hope you've had a great end to your second week! Lots of positive stories are coming my way from tutors who are enjoying the groups in their classes.

Congrats on submitting iteration 0, and you can take a little bit of a breath this weekend before things start to progressively pick up next week.

Some key updates and reminders for you:

• Please don't forget to watch the lectures. Some students start to fall behind. Students who fall behind in lectures tend to, on average, get lower marks in the course. Ensure you've watched all week 1 & 2 lectures by Sunday night.
• I have released the code that we used in lectures here . You can find the code for weeks 1-3 in that repo. The code will be updated after the lectures, and I will share the code for future weeks later.
• I re-uploaded all lecture slides for week 1&2. The slides are now more user-friendly and more suitable for printing. Thank you to those who provided feedback on the slides.
• Tutorial 2 solutions have been released.
• Lab 2 is due on Monday at 5 pm.
• We have many help sessions. Sometimes, the queue was quite empty this week. So feel free to join to get free 1-1 help! :) You can check the help session schedule here .

🌳 Lab01

Your lab01 has been marked, and your "theoretical" marks are on the grades page . Remember, these marks don't count for anything! It was just a trial run.

You can read our detailed info about looking at your lab marks here - this is a very useful guide !!

🦃 Iteration 1

Iteration 1 will be released this Saturday evening. Keep an eye out for merge requests in your project repo. An introductory video is contained in the spec. However, the video was recorded for 23T2, and the spec has minor changes for 23T3. Please read through the spec for 23T3 and consult the spec for changes.

Iteration 1 is due on the Friday of week 4, so you have around two weeks to complete it.

From iteration 1, we expect to see engagement with standups, meetings, task boards, etc from everyone between now and iteration 1 is due. We will talk more about engagement in Tuesday's lecture next week.

Please regularly check for merge requests and spec updates on your projects! Every day or two, check out the git commit history or any course-pushed pending merge requests.

⏰ Next week

In week 3, we will learn about continuous integration (an exciting and critical part of software engineering) as well as touch on a lot more static verification. These are exciting topics.

See you next Tuesday, and enjoy your weekend. :)

🐕 End of week 1 updates

Posted by Yuchao Jiang 🍄 Sunday 17 September 2023, 07:22:20 AM, last modified Sunday 17 September 2023, 07:22:59 AM.

Hi everyone!

It was great meeting you online and in person! Now that we're wrapping up week 1, it's a great time to summarise the key things that happened this week and give you some pointers for week 2.

Week 1 recap

The key things that happened in week 1 are:

• Week 1 lecture slides and recordings can be found on this page .
• Week 1 tutorial and lab content links can be found on this page .
  • Week 1 tutorial solutions were released yesterday (always released on Friday). They are on the solutions branch in the tutorial's repo.
  • Week 1 lab solutions will be released shortly after the deadline next week (check out the "solutions" branch on the repos)
  • Week 1 lab marks will be released next Friday (Friday of week 2)
    • Next Friday, to see more about the marks you got in the lab and other information, check out the bottom of the Labs page under "Lab marks".
• Your project groups were formed during class, and the project specification will be released on week 2 Monday morning.
  • You should email your tutor if you're unsure what group you're in.
• If you're still a bit unsure about any of the software or tools to set up for the course, check out the getting started guide .
  • We know that you might use SSH-FS for COMP1511 and some other courses. However, there are known issues with using SSH-FS in more advanced projects, as in comp1531. Please either use VLAB or use a local setup.

Project groups

During your week 1 class, your tutor finalised your project groups in your lab time.

A reminder that whilst you aren't required to communicate via the Microsoft Teams channel, it's important to note that if teamwork disputes arise or you make claims about other team member's contributions later in the course - the only places we will look to for evidence of how you interact with your group are:

1. The project check-ins and iteration demonstrations
2. Gitlab contributions (code you push)
3. Peer reviews at the end of the iteration
4. Any UNSW emails sent between group members
5. Conversations that occur on Microsoft teams

If we need to analyse group communication, we won't be able to look at things like Facebook, Discord, Slack, etc., as these are out of our control and are open to tampering etc that makes it unfair to consider reasonable evidence. However, anything in your Microsoft Teams chats we'll happily take into account. If you're uncertain about anything here or aren't agreeing with your group on how to communicate, talk to your tutor in week 2; they will help you figure it all out! :)

If you don't have your group sorted, please email your tutor ASAP.

Project release

As of Monday morning of week 2, a group project repository will be created for each group. The repository is called " project-backend ". You can find your group repository (if you haven't already) on the homepage of nw-syd-gitlab.cseunsw.tech. If you can't find your repository, please post on the forum. If you can find the repo, but you're in the wrong group, please email your tutor ASAP.

The project's first stage is iteration 0, and due next Friday night - week 2. It's a very easy stage. You will have five days to complete it - but that is OK! It should only take a couple of hours!

Next Monday, the most important thing to do is to start messaging or emailing your group members and reading through the project specifications. You can sync up about it and start some early planning, and I would strongly encourage you to organise times to meet next week. From week 3 onwards, we will expect groups to follow a more rigid meeting as we move onto the project's next stage.

Over the coming days, there may continue to be slight changes to your group, primarily due to students potentially dropping the course before the census date. Your tutors will always support you and find solutions that will make things OK :)

Things to keep an eye on for Week 2

• Your week 1 lab is due 5pm on Monday. Remember that lab01 does not count for any marks.
• Your week 2 tutorial + lab is critical for you to spend time with your group and tutor to get stuck into the project.
• Help Sessions !
• Sometimes we push updates to your repos (e.g. labs or projects) that may appear as merge requests in the left-hand sidebar. Keep an eye out for it. Your tutor(s) can always help out if you're confused.
• Lectures next week:
  • We will talk about project management and Mutli-file & Importing on Tuesday, Dynamic Verification and Working as a team on Friday. Looking forward to seeing you again.

Other than that, have a great weekend!

😍 Welcome to COMP1531 23T3 🎉🎉

Posted by Yuchao Jiang 🍄 Sunday 10 September 2023, 03:23:01 PM, last modified Monday 11 September 2023, 11:20:57 AM.

Hi everyone! Welcome to COMP1531 23T3 :)

The fundamental aim of COMP1531 is to help you transition from being a solo programmer into a collaborative software engineer . We have a teaching staff team of about 40. Feel free to i ntroduce yourself in the forum and we're all super excited to get to know you!

We encourage you all to read the COURSE OUTLINE on ECOS, because it highlights virtually everything. ECOS is UNSW's new Enterprise Course Outline Solution.

Getting ready for week 1!

Lectures

All lecture links are here . You are welcome to come in person regardless of if you enrolled in the in-person or online stream.

• Week 1 lab questions aren't worth marks - we mark them for practice but don't actually count your marks.
• Week 1 lab is due on MONDAY of week 2. So for late enrolments, you have week 1 weekend to sort that out.
• Your tutorial and lab material for week 1 can be found here ! All labs and practice activities are already released to you.
• Your tutor will finalise your group allocations for the major project during your class.

See you soon!

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🐼 Welcome to COMP1531 & Important information before term

Posted by Yuchao Jiang 🍄 Wednesday 06 September 2023, 10:02:44 AM, last modified Wednesday 06 September 2023, 10:04:00 AM.

Hi everyone,

A very early welcome to COMP1531 for 23T3. This early welcome is predominate to give you time to fill out the group preference form below.

A more detailed introduction with information and summaries will be sent out next week, but here are a few things to get you prepped for the term.

1. 🐼 (Read below) Complete the group preference form for the major project*
2. 😽 Go and read the course outline .
3. 🙊 Join the forum and introduce yourself ! (You were invited on your email z5555555@unsw.edu.au)
4. 👨💻 Our first lecture will also be in-person during week 1! This is shown on the lecture timetable page.

❗️ *(IMPORTANT) Group Preference for Major Project

As specified in the course outline , COMP1531 has a major project component that is a 5-person, 9-week group project that constitutes 60% of the course assessment. The successful and equitable formation of amazing groups of students for this major project is a priority for us. And we need to finalise these groups before week1.

For us to form groups effectively, you are required to complete the preference form .

This form asks you to:

• Optionally preference 1 other student to be in your group of 5.
• If you preference someone, to avoid us disregarding the preference, they must:
• (1) Be enrolled in the same class at the same time (i.e., same code on MyUNSW)
• (2) Fill out the form preferencing you as well (we disregard preferences if it only goes one way)
• Answer a few further questions that help us form groups, regardless of whether you have a person-preference.

The form is due on Saturday 9th of September at 11pm!!

We sadly aren't in a position to accept late preferences, so please fill it in prior to then. Preferences are not guarantees that you will be in a group with that person, however, in nearly all cases we make it work.

If you don't have anyone to preference, or only have one preference, don't even worry! That's very normal. You might hear murmurs from other students that you could end up with a "horror group" for COMP1531. Believe it or not, typically about 50% of student's don't provide preferences, and we just randomly match students in the same class.

We can assure you that while groups that struggle do exist, they only make up a small number of groups. We have structured the course and assessment very intentionally to have processes in place to ensure that if you work hard and follow the rules, your accomplishments should reflect your mark, even if you end up with some challenging group situations.

Lastly, a reminder that we can't manually enrol you in a full class, and we aren't accepting more than one preference per person as this ensures equitable group formation.

We'll reach out again next week with much more information about getting started and first classes!

🎃 Until then, enjoy your week and stay safe. The entire team can't wait to meet you.