• Single top person in class overall will get an "A+"
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CS161 is designed to introduce students to object oriented programming by building on the understanding of procedural programming obtained from CS160. As with CS160, the course is structured to interleave theory, programming and architecture concepts as needed to motivate and explain problem solving using object oriented programming.

The core of the course is explaining objects: how they represent data and how they are defined and used in Java. Fundamental concepts such as inheritance and polymorphism are introduced and explained in the context of programming assignments. Recursive data structures such as linked lists and basic algorithms such as binary search serve to connect theory (recursion, induction and counting) to programming operations (e.g., creating, searching and maintaining).

A student completing this course should be able to:

Implement object oriented programs and understand the underlying principles such as encapsulation, abstraction and reuse.
• Design and build more complex programs (multiple files and multiple objects).
• Design more efficient programs by understanding basic algorithms, analyzing their complexity and understanding how they are implemented in hardware and software.
• Relate concepts from theory to programming and architecture, such as how recursion is programmed and implemented in hardware and when it is an appropriate programming technique.

This course is essential for majors and other students who intend to use object oriented programming to solve problems and who intend to write complex software. The course would be useful to any student intending to pursue Computer Science or Information Technology as a career.