Projects

The implementation projects are an essential part of this class. They replace homework assignments and the final in the second half of the course.

• Weekly Task Assignments
• General Information
• Expectations
• Language and Environment
• Programming Style

Weekly Task Assignments

There are three project groups:

See the table below for weekly task assignments.

General Information

Within each group, there are 5 responsibilites which are re-assigned every week.

1. Interface
2. Validation
3. Search
4. Redundancy Elimination
5. Coordination

See the table above on the tasks for each week. The binding of students to responsibilities each week is left up to the groups. They should be done in such a way that everyone has done each of the 5 jobs throughout the 5-week project.

If a student should be unavailable during a week, it is the coordinator's job to distribute the workload.

Expectations

• At the end of each week, each student must send me a weekly progress report, including a pointer to the files or materials created or edited.
• Everyone should do their best to complete their task by the deadline. If this is impossible, a stable, but perhaps incomplete state should be achieved. Completion of the task then carries over into someone else's responsibility the following week.
• Each week, the coordinator should send me a summary report for the whole group's progress.

Language and Environment

• The programming language for the project is Standard ML. This resource page contains more information on using SML at CMU. We will be using the Compilation Manager (CM).
• The version control system is CVS. This resource page contains more information on the repository and conventions in effect for this class.

Programming Style

• The emphasis in this course is clarity, elegance, and beauty, not efficiency.
• If there is simple, elegant, but inefficient way to write a function, do it. Efficiency will be achieved at the level of algorithms, not through hacks.
• If you are tempted to improve the efficiency of the code at the expense of clarity, close your eyes, take a few deep breaths, and wait until the urge passes.
• Write or negotiate signatures before you write signficant code. This is essential in a multi-person project.
• Renegotiate changes to your signature with affected parties.
• Break down the overall code in your module into small functions.
• Lay out the code with a standard tab stop (8 spaces) to a width no more than 100 characters. Take advantage of SML mode in Emacs or XEmacs. Pay attention to the look of the code---others will have to read and modify it!
• Annotate all functions with their invariants.
• Clearly state complex invariants at the beginning of a section of code which relies on them.
• Avoid the pervasive use of weakly structures datatypes such as lists. The type-checker can verify more invariants with more specialized types.
• You should not use any extensions is SML of New Jersey which go beyond or are in conflict with the official definition and standard library.
• The emphasis in this course is clarity, elegance, and beauty, not efficiency.