COMP1531: Software Engineering Fundamentals

For this term:
30% Final Exam
50% Project
20% Class Mark (incl. attendance, lab work)

Prerequisite: COMP1511 or DPST1091 or COMP1917 or COMP1921 (stolen from above link)

The course was really well organised and well run by the faculty. The only criticism I really have is that a lot of the content was crammed into the term, teaching both Python and software development. While software development was a priority, teaching Python was also a mandatory part of the term. Teaching Python was probably easier than it would've been otherwise considering COMP1511 was a prereq but at the same time, taking time to teach it takes away from teaching software development. However, I don't think this is any fault of the teaching staff as they did what they could given the circumstances and did it very well. They gave more than enough information for everyone to pass comfortably, marked leniently enough and were really friendly. Nice course - I'd recommend it even if it wasn't a prereq for many other courses.

2x 2hr lectures
1x 3hr Tute/Lab

3/5

Yes

Hayden Smith

Lecture slides + provided links

4/5

None

2020 T3

86 HD

Prerequisites:

A dry course I didn't find much fun in, but with some useful techniques. The marking was very subjective, but a lot of the tutors were relaxed in marking because of it, which made it alright. The main language for this course was Python, but you were expected to mostly self-teach it, and there were some other languages that were required in the web dev part of the course (HTML, Flask, Jinja, CSS + JS if you wanted). The project I found particularly boring, and without good group members, would have been unbearable; The course staff were good, but the content they had to teach was way too boring for them to be able to make it an interesting course regardless. A lot of the content was rote learnt, which I really didn't like, and made summaries somewhat of a necessity for the revision; a lot of the content was simple, but there was so much of it that you needed to spend more time than I initially planned studying for it. No web dev was tested in the final, as it was a major part of the project, and was difficult to test in an exam environment. I wouldn't recommend this course to anyone unless you need to do it for your degree, or it's required for a course you really want to do. If you do do it though, be prepared for rote.

2x 2hr Lecture, 1x 1hr Tutorial + 2hr Lab (Combined)

1/5

Yes - screen and voice recorded.

Aarthi Natarajan

Lecture slides online. Tutorials and labs supplied with solutions online. Sample final and midterm exam provided.

2/5

Note: I don't use textbooks and can't comment on their usefulness. None prescribed, but useful references:

2019 T1

94 HD

- 3 x 1% week-long quiz
- 12% labs (there were 7 of them this term)
- 10% mid-term take-home exam
- 25% group project
- 50% final exam

Prerequisite is COMP1511 and of course you do a bit of programming, but I don't think it contributes too much.

This course is one of the first year core courses in UNSW CSE degrees. It's focus is essentially on what the course title says - software engineering.

The course was essentially written from the lecturer's brain (using her own experiences) in an attempt to make it as practical as possible. A software engineer more or less needs to go through the entire design process (search: software development life cycle) and actually build the software from scratch, as opposed to just coding away based off specs. The process was mostly achieved through the group project. (I say 'mostly' because the reduced time frame from the trimester model makes it hard to truly reflect the software development procedure.)

Fact is though I just found things dry and didn't enjoy a lot of what I learnt. I don't see myself going into a software engineer's world if I have to go through that design process. Design was never something I liked greatly. I also found myself rote learning and relying on getting carried by my peers way too much for my liking in this course. On the programming side of things, the python coverage is quite little (it is NOT a programming course!) and I didn't really understand much of the web dev stuff either.

Project can be a time drainer depending on how you approach it. If you have friends taking the course though, try to enrol into the same tute and do it with them.

In saying that, I can still see how the course was 'intended' to be useful at least. I've been told that quite a fair bit of the stuff you learn here does get used in the real world. (After all, who's gonna write Google/Microsoft/... their specifications? They have to it themselves surely.) Possibly one day I'll appreciate having to take this course.

My only praises about this course (and literally where all the 1.5/5 rating points came from) were that the lecturers and tutors were extremely nice with how they ran the course and evidently marked leniently. (Worthwhile mentions: Midterm was meant to be sat in class, then swapped with a 24hr take home test, then extended to a 48hr take home test. Also, web dev was not examined - thank goodness.) This was more or less a course where I just could not put up with the content (and only the content), but that alone affected things greatly.

- 4 hours lecture
- 1 hour tute + 2 hours lab

3.5/5 (mostly due to the project - everything else I'd say 2.5/5)

Yes

Dr. Aarthi Natarajan

Basically just whatever's put on webcms3, i.e. lecture slides, tutes/labs and some revision questions in preparation for the finals.

1.5/5

N/A

19 T1

89 HD