Syllabus for UCLA Computer Science 35L
Software Construction Laboratory

No textbook has been selected; online material will be referred to extensively.

Topics, labs and homeworks are tentative and may be changed as the schedule progresses.

Lectures

Introduction, files and editing (2007-09-27 – 2007-10-03)

• Multiuser and multiprocess operating systems
• GUI basics (e.g., X, Gnome, KDE)
• CLI basics (e.g., Bash, xterm)
• Unix file system layout
• Everything is a file — device files
• Unix permissions
• Basic commands: ls; pwd, cd, mkdir, rmdir; echo, cat; cp, mv, ln, rm; chmod, kill, ps
• Documentation and man pages
• Text editors: emacs & vi

Commands and basic scripting (2007-10-04 – 2007-10-10)

• Unix wildcards, basic regular expressions
• More advanced commands (e.g., grep, find)
• Pipelines and redirection
• Simple shell scripting
• Idea of interpreted languages

More scripting, VMs, and construction tools (2007-10-11 – 2007-10-17)

• Basics of Python
• Java as a compromise between interpreted and compiled languages
• Building from source
  • automake and autoconf
  • make

Change management (2007-10-18 – 2007-10-24)

• diff and patch
• Basics of Makefiles
• Version control systems, e.g., CVS
  • retrieving a tree to build and install
  • committing a change
  • dealing with merge conflicts

Low-level construction and debugging (2007-10-25 – 2007-10-31)

• The C compilation and linking process
• Introduction to C
• Debuggers and debugging tools, e.g., GDB, Valgrind, strace.

Systems programming (2007-10-31 – 2007-11-07)

• C and system programming
• Library calls vs. system calls

Faults, failures, errors, and holes (2007-11-08 – 2007-11-14)

• Ways in which a program can go wrong
• Buffer overruns, and techniques for avoiding them
• Reflections on Trusting Trust

Networking basics (2007-11-15 – 2007-11-21)

• packet switched vs circuit switched
• Ideas of TCP/IP
• Ping
• Traceroute
• Route tables and netmasks
• Firefox

Security basics (2007-11-26 – 2007-11-29)

• Threats, including eavesdropping, tampering, forgery, and denial of service
• Authentication, authorization, and accounting
• Chains of trust
• Firewalls, kernels, and sandboxes
• Intrusion detection
• Backups
• Security policies

The crystal ball (2007-12-03 – 2007-12-06)

• Trends in computing research and development
• Things to increase your chances at grad school: research, 199's, etc
• Other general tips for excelling in upper division classes