course_info

I taught ECS161 (Programming Tools) at UC Davis in Spring 2024.

Course materials are not here yet, I hadn’t yet switched to this course site from Canvas. I will port them over at some point.

This is how I might structure the course topics, if I teach the class again:

• Programming Tools Intro
  • Why is there a class about this? Who cares what tools I use?
  • Easy tools vs. Powerful tools
  • Were GUIs a mistake? Avoid clicking buttons.
  • Programming is not about programming
  • Paying for Tools
    • Prioritizing access to quality tools is intrinsic to being a craftsperson. Software is no different.
  • Learning Objectives:
    • Question the common mindset: “I cannot afford $20/monthor$200 one-time for a premium tool”.
    • Question the common mindset: “this tool is bad because I can’t immediately see how to use it”.
    • Reflect on what makes a good tool.
    • Understand the arguments for why programmers might prefer to use programmable interfaces.
    • Describe the programming tools you are already familiar with, and what you use them for.
• Integrated Development Environments
  • IDEs vs. Editors
  • Efficient Navigation
    • Modal Editing
    • Window management
    • Search
    • Structural Navigation
      • Go to Definition
      • …
  • VSCode Practical Tips
  • Language Server Protocol
• AI Programming Tools
  • Crash Course on Generative AI
    • What is a language model?
    • How are language models trained?
    • How do we get a dialog system from a langauge model?
    • Are language models trustworthy? What influences correctness of LLM outputs?
  • Prompting
  • AI Programming workflows
    • Chat
    • Autocomplete/Copilot
    • Highlight-and-prompt
    • “Agentic”
    • …?
    • Model Context Protocol
• Version Control
  • git
  • pre-git VCs
  • git vs. GitHub
• Build Systems
  • Types of build systems
  • Practical Examples
  • What is a Dependency?
• Debugging
  • Breakpoint types
• Interacting with APIs
  • REST
  • GraphQL
• Human Factors & The Big Picture
  • Not treated in depth here, hopefully treated in more depth in
  • Why Can’t We Make Simple Software? - Peter van Hardenberg
  • The Death of the Stubborn Developer