Practicum in Software Construction - Midterm Study Guide

Midterm Format

The midterm will be administered through Canvas on Wednesday February 23rd. It will be available all day but you will have 3 hours to complete the exam once you start. It is open book and open computer but all work must be completed independently. It will contain a mix of freeform concept questions, "find the bug" type problems, and a couple short coding exercises.

What is not on the test?

  • We only brushed over Cucumber so I won't ask you to write Cucumber tests. The concept of Behavior Driven Development is fair game though
  • I'm not expecting you to know any specific open source licenses.
  • Art History will not be on the Midterm
  • Feel free to ask if anything else will definitely not be on the Midterm

Topics

This may not be a 100% complete list of topics but it should get you most of the way to what you need. The slides are your friends and some of the interactive slides / code examples might be really helpful.

  • Git topics
    • What is a commit?
    • How do you make a commit?
    • What are branches?
    • What does checking out a branch or a commit do?
    • What is a merge? What is a merge conflict?
    • Remote commands like clone, pull, push
    • Relationship between Git and GitHub
  • Licenses
    • What is open source code? What are the boundaries on how you can restrict use?
  • Package Managers
    • What is a package manager? Why do we use them?
    • How does Maven help keep your Java project organized?
    • Semantic Versioning
  • Http
    • Parts of an HTTP Request and Response
    • General networking concepts (IP addresses, public / private / local IP)
    • General info in a URL
    • The general idea of what REST is all about
  • Spring
    • What is Dependency Injection? Why is it helpful?
    • HTTP annotations for making a Spring server
      • @RestController
      • @GetMapping / @PostMapping / etc
      • @PathVariable / @RequestBody / @RequestParam
    • How to use Dependency Injection in Spring
  • Automated Testing
    • How to write JUnit Tests?
    • What is the structure of a test?
    • Purpose of Test Driven Development
    • Purpose of Behavior Driven Development
  • State Management & Functional Programming
    • What is a pure function?
    • The state management errors we talked about in class
  • APIs
    • What is an API?
    • What are some of the things to think about when making an API?

Tips

  • Get good at setting up a setting up a basic Spring project in your IDE. Maybe set up one ahead of time. Don't waste time futzing with IDE settings.
  • Make sure you know how to start a Spring server how to test your @GetMapping / @PostMapping / etc methods. If you haven't figured out Postman or a similar tool yet, now is the time.
  • Make sure you know how to include a new library in your project from Maven