INTRODUCING C++, GUI PROGRAMMING, AND DESIGN PATTERNS WITH QT AT THE “CS3” LEVEL

The author describes an innovative, one semester course that operates at the “CS3” level. The course assumes that students have already acquired substantial mastery of a modern programming language (e.g., Java or C) and begins by introducing a carefully selected core set of C++ topics. This core includes dynamic memory management, which is introduced early and used extensively throughout the course. A major asset in this course is Qt 4, a large, well documented, multi-platform, open source library of classes and algorithms that is ideal for teaching Object-Oriented programming, GUI programming, Design Patterns, and code reuse. This course seems well suited to the needs of departments that run CS1-CS2 sequences using Java or C. Students are required to write at least nine substantial programs during the semester and are also required to install and use Linux and several open source tools for their work. They must also customize their programming environments to facilitate the evaluation of their homework submissions.
The author co-wrote the textbook for this course, which was published in 2007 by Prentice Hall and was open-sourced, and made freely available to students and faculty in 2008. Extensive instructor support is also available to users of this text.