CS193S: Scalable Web Programming

Course Description:
CS 193S is a 3 unit course focusing on tools and practices for scalable programming on the web, with programming projects built around these practices.  The course explores topics in scalability and charts the development path for a large scale modern web service.  A single developer should be able to build, test, and deploy a single codebase using only open source tools and libraries. This is difficult to accomplish in practice, due to the variety of skill sets needed for UI, client, server, and database coding. The framework presented in this course offers solutions that do not sacrifice long term scalability and maintainability for rapid development cycles and easy prototyping. Programming projects will provide an overview of technologies and critical constraints.

Programming Projects and Advocates

Lectures: Tue & Thu 2:15-3:30, Gates B03 (through March 12)

Instructor: Jan Jannink (Office hours: Tue & Thu 3:30pm to 4:30pm: Phone: (650) 646-2920)

Course assistants:
Aditya Acharya (Office hours: Mon 3-5 pm, Wed 1-3 pm)
Ed Suh (Office hours: Wed 7-9 pm, Sun 4-6 pm)
All office hours are in Gates B28

Newsgroup:   su.class.cs193s

• The NNTP server for the newsgroup is usenet.stanford.edu, NOT nntp.stanford.edu
• You may need to add a certificate exception which you can download from nntp://usenet.stanford.edu:563

Assignments:   Three programming projects:

• Unit testing & integration: 20% of course grade, due Thursday, January 21th at 2:15 PM,
• Project-Milestone 1: 30-50% of course grade, due Thursday, February 18th at 2:15 PM,
• Project-Milestone 2: 30-50% of course grade, due Friday, March 5th at 11:59 PM.
• Note: The milestone you do better on will count for 50%. The other will count for 30%.

Policies:

• Lateness: since this class is designed to reflect how software is developed in the real world, in principle no late assignments will be accepted. We will look at submission times and grade up to the latest check in prior to the deadline. There will be no grace period, so DO NOT wait until the last minute to check your work in. You might find that someone else has just checked in something that creates a conflict with your code which you cannot easily resolve.
• Regrades: We take great care to ensure that grading is fair and consistent. Since we will always use the same grading procedure, any grades you receive are unlikely to change significantly. However, if you feel that your work deserves a regrade, please submit a written request to the staff e-mail list within a week of receiving your grade. In your request, indicate which components of your submission you would like regraded, and why you feel we should regrade those components. However, note that we reserve the right to regrade the entire assignment.

Approach:   The goal of the course is for the programming environment to resemble an internship working on an open source website.  Interaction and collaboration between students is welcome.  Grades will be earned by checking in software to the class repository.  The expectation is that coursework will be checked in on a regular basis during the course of the quarter.

Reading:   Almost all of the course source material is web based.  The most significant recommended (optional) readings will be posted in the course slides and here below:

• Install git on Windows, Mac OS X & Ubuntu on your personal machine (by Aditya Acharya)
• Using the git repo from university machines (myth, corn, etc.)
• Building Scalable Web Sites, Cal Henderson, O'Reilly, 2006
  
• High Performance Web Sites