Postgraduate Course: Programming Skills (PGPH11079)

Course Outline
School	School of Physics and Astronomy	College	College of Science and Engineering
Credit level (Normal year taken)	SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate)	Availability	Not available to visiting students
SCQF Credits	10	ECTS Credits	5
Summary	Writing code can be easy. Writing modular, robust, reliable, maintainable, efficient and understandable code can be more challenging. This course provides a practical introduction to skills and knowledge covering program design and development. It is designed to help you to produce higher quality code, more rapidly and with less effort. These programming skills are applicable to any programming language and the course is illustrated with examples from C, Fortran 90, Java and Python. Areas of specific relevance to high-performance computing, including the use of batch systems, scientific libraries, profilers and performance analysis, are also covered.
Course description	Lectures cover key aspects of good programming practice: * How programs run - fundamentals of operating systems and compilers. * What makes a good program - writing programs for people. * Code design - abstract data types and object-orientation. * Automated testing. * Analysis, profiling and performance. Other requirements: You must have some experience in a programming language e.g. C, C++, FORTRAN, Java or Python, and be familiar with programming concepts including conditionals, loops, arrays and functions.

Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
Pre-requisites		Co-requisites
Prohibited Combinations		Other requirements	You must have experience in a programming language e.g. C, C++, FORTRAN, Java or Python, and be familiar with programming concepts including conditionals, loops, arrays and functions.

Course Delivery Information

Academic year 2015/16, Not available to visiting students (SS1)		Quota: 46
Course Start	Semester 1
Timetable	Timetable
Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info)	Total Hours: 100 ( Lecture Hours 22, Seminar/Tutorial Hours 11, Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 2, Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours 65 )
Additional Information (Learning and Teaching)	Please contact the School for further information
Assessment (Further Info)	Written Exam 0 %, Coursework 100 %, Practical Exam 0 %
Additional Information (Assessment)	Three submissions: 20% individual report, 60% group-based source code, 20% individual report.
Feedback	Not entered
No Exam Information

Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to: Develop code in a Linux/Unix environment. Develop code that is modular, robust, reliable, maintainable, efficient and understandable. Use software development tools including integrated development environments, code browsers, debuggers, revision control, build management, test frameworks, and profilers. Design, execute, analyse and write-up software performance experiments.