The module's contract, and the map of notions

This text is to be read in session 0, with the prerequisites test. It contains everything the module will ask of you, and nothing else will be required at the end of the module.

The contract

The actual timetable

The module consists of nine lecture slots, two project slots, one day with Fabien ESCOURBIAC and an oral defence, that is 15 h 45 of lectures in total.

There are three periods without lectures: from 24/09 to 05/10, from 07/10 to 19/10 and from 24/10 to 02/11. Each has its own roadmap, planned for at most two hours of work a week, which takes your work-study schedule into account.

Organisation of the sequences

Each notion is covered in a 45-minute sequence, always in the same order: a situation, seven minutes of explanation, a break where you choose your level, and an exercise checked by provided tests.

The module distinguishes three levels of requirement, announced from the start:

• Core: 13 notions, certified individually, on paper and without a computer. These are the skills the module guarantees.
• Reading: the lecture notes and the quizzes. This content is covered, but not certified in depth.
• Project: assessed on what you produce, with the assistant allowed, and orally.

At each break, you freely choose your level. There are no streamed groups: nobody is ranked once and for all.

The core exercises offer three hints, from the vaguest to the most detailed. Using them is not penalised; if you are stuck, it is better to use them than to lose time.

The code-generation assistant

The assistant is forbidden in some activities and expected in others.

Forbidden: during the core exercises, the quizzes, the prerequisites test and the written exam. These activities are used to check that you can read code, spot a flaw in it and fix it. If an assistant answers in your place, the result no longer says anything about your level, and you lose a useful indication.

Expected: on the project, on the challenges and at the oral. Writing a precise request, checking the answer, keeping what is correct and discarding the rest is part of the job. This skill is assessed, in particular your ability to spot the assistant's mistakes.

No detector or monitoring software is used. Checks are made on paper, or orally by asking you to justify your own code.

What is marked

The mark is based on two assessments, and the first conditions the second.

• The written exam, without AI, after the end of the lectures: thirteen questions, one per core notion, on code to read, diagnose and fix, in 1 h 30 to 2 h. There are no questions on the course itself: each question is about a given piece of code, whose flaws you have to spot and explain.
• The project and its defence, with AI allowed. What is assessed is the command of the concepts, the quality of the design, teamwork and your ability to explain and defend your code.

The prerequisites test in session 0 is not marked; it is used to identify what you need to review.

Why this format

This format can give the impression of learning less than in a lecture course, since the explanation lasts seven minutes per sequence instead of an hour. Measurements show, however, that you learn more this way. A smooth lecture gives an impression of understanding, but it is the effort of retrieving a notion from memory that makes it stick.

You will probably have covered fewer things than in other modules, but you will be able to do more with them.

The map of notions

A notion is something you must know how to do, stated with a verb whose achievement can be checked. The module has twenty-eight of them: 13 in the core (S), 3 already acquired in COOA (A), 8 for reading (L) and 4 in the project (P).

The thirteen core notions and their exam question

The table gives the exact form of the thirteen questions of the written exam. Each question is about an extract of code provided with the paper.

The thirteenth sequence, on 03/11, is a reserve sequence, devoted to remediation and to revising the points that are least well mastered.

Order of the notions

Some notions assume others. In the diagram, an arrow means that the first notion is needed to understand the second.

flowchart LR
    N8["N8 · relationships<br>seq. 1"] --> N3["N3 · inherit or compose<br>seq. 2"]
    N3 --> N10["N10 · interface<br>seq. 3"]
    N8 --> N10
    N10 --> N11["N11 · patterns, 1st series<br>seq. 10"]
    N11 --> N28["N28 · patterns, 2nd series<br>seq. 12"]
    N8 --> N9["N9 · coupling, cohesion<br>seq. 5"]
    N9 --> N13["N13 · SOLID<br>seq. 6"]
    N15["N15 · try/finally flow<br>seq. 7"] --> N16["N16 · anti-patterns<br>seq. 7"]
    N15 --> N19["N19 · try-with-resources<br>seq. 8"]
    N14["N14 · checked or not<br>seq. 9"] --> N18["N18 · preconditions<br>seq. 11"]
    N2["N2 · encapsulation<br>seq. 4"]

The top chain, N8 → N3 → N10, takes up the whole lecture of 23/09: these are the notions needed to break down your project properly on 06/10. N2 belongs to the OOP that the course description considers already acquired; the module takes it up again from the angle of the invariant to protect.

What you already have from COOA

You worked on these three notions in Advanced object-oriented concepts, and they were assessed in the exam of 3 April. They are not taught again, and they are not in the written exam. A fifteen-minute diagnostic, on the morning of 21/10, checks that they still hold; if one no longer does, the roadmap that follows 23/10 says what to review.

The reading notions

Each of these notions is the subject of a quiz question and a passage of the lecture notes, but they are not certified. None of them will be in the written exam.

The project notions

These notions are put into practice in the project, with the assistant, and defended orally.

What the module does not certify

With 15 h 45 of lectures, choices had to be made, and it is the lowest-priority notions of the map that were reduced:

• multi-threading is only covered for reading (N24);
• files and databases are only covered in the project (N25);
• Git and unit tests are dealt with during the day of 15/10, with F. ESCOURBIAC, and are not part of the written exam.