Course Outline

Contents

• Course Details
• Course Summary
• Assumed Knowledge
• Student Learning Outcomes
• Teaching Strategies
• Teaching Rationale
• Student Conduct
• Assessment
• Course Schedule
• Resources for Students
• Course Evaluation and Development

Course Details

Course Code	COMP3141
Course Title	Software System Design and Implementation
Convenor	Johannes Åman Pohjola
Lecturer-in-charge	Johannes Åman Pohjola
Classes	Lectures : See timetable . Live Zoom broadcasts may also be available if feasible.
Consultations	By request via email (cs3141@cse.unsw.edu.au) or class forum
Units of Credit	6
Course Website	http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~cs3141/23T2/
Handbook Entry	http://www.handbook.unsw.edu.au/undergraduate/courses/current/COMP3141.html

Course Summary

This course presents a variety of programming techniques that make use of semi-formal and formal methods for the design and implementation phases of real-world software system development. It introduces approaches to testing informed by formal designs, and it discusses trade-offs between static and dynamic approaches to improving software correctness. Throughout the course, the discussed methods are supported by software tools that assist in managing design, implementation, and testing. The course content is illustrated by weekly programming case studies and regular practical exercises. Central topics are the use of functional programming, logical properties and types to inform program design, implementation, validation, and verification. The course will introduces students to the strongly-typed Haskell programming language. No previous knowledge of Haskell is assumed.

As with any course which teaches a potentially unfamiliar language, this course involves a significant amount of programming, both during and outside of lectures.

Assumed Knowledge

You need to have successfully completed the core programming, algorithm, and software development courses. You should be a confident coder and be prepared to study the concepts of a new programming language in directed self-study.

The prerequisites of COMP3141 are COMP1927 or COMP2521, or a mark of at least 65 in COMP1921.

The course makes use of a number of discrete mathematics concepts. While it is possible to do well in the course without having done MATH1081 or COMP2111, familiarity with logic and set theory is valuable when studying COMP3141.

Student Learning Outcomes

After completing this course, you should

1. be comfortable with using Haskell and functional programming to write practical software.
2. be able to specify programs in terms of logical properties and functional correctness.
3. distinguish and balance the trade-offs between static methods (such as formal methods and type systems) and dynamic methods (such as testing) in assisting software design and implementation.
4. appropriately use types in program design, implementation, validation, and verification.
5. be able to use a variety of tools based on formal specifications of logical properties.

The course gradually exposes students to a mathematically founded approach to specifying and implementing software systems. It develops basic skills required to engineer software with high confidence in the correctness of the final product. The whole course encourages critical examination and analysis of existing solutions.

Teaching Strategies

Lectures

are face-to-face lectures, possibly involving a Zoom livestreaming option, which introduce new concepts.

Practice Lectures

are face-to-face lectures, possibly involving a Zoom livestreaming option, where students will work with the lecturers to solve problems.

Weekly marked programming exercises

start in Week 2. There will be 6 exercises. These exercises will reinforce the material discussed in the week's lecture.

Students have approximately one week to submit a solution. Solutions will be automatically marked. Solutions to exercises will not be accepted late. Automarking results are binding; exercises will generally not be manually remarked. There are no extensions to exercises, excepting special considerations. Solutions to the exercises will be discussed in the practice lectures each week. Only the best five quiz results are considered when computing the course marks.

Quizzes act as a forcing function, encouraging students to digest and comprehend the topics introduced each week in a timely manner. A total of 8 weekly marked quizzes will be made available, starting in Week 1. They will assess the theoretical lecture content for that week, in a series of multiple choice questions, and will be due on the Friday of the following week. For example, the quiz for the Week 1 lectures will be due on the Friday of Week 2. Students are encouraged to submit the quiz soon after the lectures for the week having concluded, as part of a weekly review. All eight quiz results are considered when computing the course marks, but partial marks are awarded for partially correct answers on multiple choice questions.

The quizzes will be available on the course website. Students can submit as many times as they like up until the due date, however solutions are shown after the due date, so late submission of the quizzes will not be accepted. These quizzes are all automatically marked. In general, the difficulty of the quizzes is not indicative of any other component such as the exam. The quizzes help to consolidate lecture content, but sometimes the quiz questions will require some lateral thinking or referring to the lecture code, slides, or notes.

Assignments

allow students to apply their skills to larger problems. There will be two practical assignments. Students will have between one and two weeks to understand each individual assignment and to develop a solution.

If you wish to submit an assignment late, you may do so, but a late penalty reducing the mark applies to every late assignment. You can be up to five days late. Each day incurs a 5% penalty to the awarded mark. For example, an assignment that would ordinarily be worth 8.5/10 will be worth 7.5/10, if submitted 2 days late.

If you have special circumstances that warrant an assignment extension (e.g. illness), you need to apply for special consideration through the standard UNSW process. Teaching staff cannot grant such extensions. Please be aware of the fit to sit/submit rule: by submitting an assessment or sitting an exam, you implicitly declare yourself fit to do so, and cannot later apply for special consideration.

Teaching Rationale

This is a course about programming and formal reasoning, and to develop both of these skills requires extensive practice. That is why we devote over half of the course — practice lectures, quizzes, assignments and exercises — to give students opportunities to put their skills into practice. This applied learning approach has proven to be very successful in achieving our desired graduate outcomes.

Student Conduct

The Student Code of Conduct ( Information , Policy ) sets out what the University expects from students as members of the UNSW community. As well as the learning, teaching and research environment, the University aims to provide an environment that enables students to achieve their full potential and to provide an experience consistent with the University's values and guiding principles. A condition of enrolment is that students inform themselves of the University's rules and policies affecting them, and conduct themselves accordingly.

In particular, students have the responsibility to observe standards of equity and respect in dealing with every member of the University community. This applies to all activities on UNSW premises and all external activities related to study and research. This includes behaviour in person as well as behaviour on social media, for example Facebook groups set up for the purpose of discussing UNSW courses or course work. Behaviour that is considered in breach of the Student Code Policy as discriminatory, sexually inappropriate, bullying, harassing, invading another's privacy or causing any person to fear for their personal safety is serious misconduct and can lead to severe penalties, including suspension or exclusion from UNSW.

If you have any concerns, you may raise them with your lecturer, or approach the School Ethics Officer , Grievance Officer , or one of the student representatives.

Plagiarism is defined as using the words or ideas of others and presenting them as your own. UNSW and CSE treat plagiarism as academic misconduct, which means that it carries penalties as severe as being excluded from further study at UNSW. There are several on-line sources to help you understand what plagiarism is and how it is dealt with at UNSW:

• Plagiarism and Academic Integrity
• UNSW Plagiarism Procedure

Make sure that you read and understand these. Ignorance is not accepted as an excuse for plagiarism. In particular, you are also responsible that your assignment files are not accessible by anyone but you by setting the correct permissions in your CSE directory and code repository, if using. Note also that plagiarism includes paying or asking another person to do a piece of work for you and then submitting it as your own work.

UNSW has an ongoing commitment to fostering a culture of learning informed by academic integrity. All UNSW staff and students have a responsibility to adhere to this principle of academic integrity. Plagiarism undermines academic integrity and is not tolerated at UNSW. Plagiarism at UNSW is defined as using the words or ideas of others and passing them off as your own.

If you haven't done so yet, please take the time to read the full text of

• UNSW's policy regarding academic honesty and plagiarism

The pages below describe the policies and procedures in more detail:

• Student Code Policy
• Student Misconduct Procedure
• Plagiarism Policy Statement
• Plagiarism Procedure

You should also read the following page which describes your rights and responsibilities in the CSE context:

• Essential Advice for CSE Students

Assessment

Item	Topics	Due	Marks	Contributes to
Quizzes	All topics	Weeks 1,2,3,4,5,7,8,9	10%	1,2,3
Exercises	All topics	Weeks 2,3,4,5,7,8	20%	1,2,4,5
Assignment 1	Functional programming, combinators, property-based testing	Week 5	10%	1,2,4,5
Assignment 2	Monads, GADTs	Week 9	10%	1,2,4,5
Final Exam	All topics	Exam period	50% (hurdle 40/100)	2,3,4

Course Schedule

Week	Lectures	Assignments	Quizzes	Exercises
1 (30 May)	Course Overview, Functional Programming	-	Quiz 1	-
2 (6 Jun)	Data Types and Type Classes, Reasoning about Haskell	-	Quiz 2	Exercise 1
3 (13 Jun)	Property-based Testing and QuickCheck	-	Quiz 3	Exercise 2
4 (20 Jun)	Devising program properties	-	Quiz 4	Exercise 3
5 (27 Jun)	Controlling Effects, State Spaces, Errors	Assignment 1 due	Quiz 5	Exercise 4
6 (4 Jun)	flexibility week	-	-	-
7 (11 Jul)	Functors, Applicative Functors and Monads I	-	Quiz 6	Exercise 5
8 (18 Jul)	Functors, Applicative Functors and Monads II	-	Quiz 7	Exercise 6
9 (25 Jul)	Rich types, GADTs I	Assignment 2 due	Quiz 8	-
10 (1 Aug)	Rich types, GADTs II	-	-	-

Resources for Students

To supplement the teaching of monads, students will be required to read the blog post You Could Have Invented Monads! prior to the introduction of monads in week 5

There is no textbook for the course. As tutorial and reference for Haskell, you can use any of these books:

• Thinking Functionally with Haskell, by Richard Bird, Cambridge University Press.
• Haskell Programming From First Principles by Christopher Allen and Julie Moronuki, Gumroad.
• Programming in Haskell, 2nd Edition by Graham Hutton, Cambridge University Press.
• Real World Haskell by Bryan O'Sullivan, Don Stewart, and John Goerzen, O'Reilly Media.
• Learn You a Haskell for Great Good! by Miran Lipovača, No Starch Press.

The last two books in this list are available as free online e-books. Further reading material will be announced in the lecture and/or on the course web page.

In addition, the Learning Haskell tutorial is written by former lecturers of this course and covers the basics of Haskell programming necessary to get started in COMP3141.

Course Evaluation and Development

This course is evaluated each session using the myExperience system. Last year's evaluation was broadly positive, but included some actionable feedback:

• Some students remarked on the lack of support structure in the form of help sessions or tutorials. This year, we'll add regularly scheduled help sessions, but unfortunately not tutorials.
• Various issues related to understaffing. This year, we're 5 people instead of 3.
• Sometimes unclear instructions and too many assessments that feel like "trick" questions. While we note that many assessments require non-trivial thinking by design, we will try to clarify the wording.