Week 1, session 1: Introduction

• Teaching team
• Course overview
• The Unix command-line
• Compiling and running our first program
• Understanding our code
• Handling command-line arguments
• Control flow
• C++ fundamentals
• Using std::string
• Using std::vector
• Error handling
• Control flow
• Other forms of conditional execution
• Exercises

Week 1, session 2: starting our first project

• Project: DNA shotgun sequencing
• Standard input
• File input & output
• Exit code
• The filesystem
• File input & output
• Progress and error reporting
• References in C++
• The project repository
• Functions
• Exercises

Week 2, session 1: multi-file projects, error handling

• Multi-file projects
• Building a multi-file project
• When do we need to recompile?
• What C++ build system is used in this course?
• The preprocessor, compiler, and linker
• Exception handling
• Understanding STL iterators
• Exercises

Week 2, session 2: more string handling, basic debugging

• Command-line options
• Variable scope
• Variable shadowing
• C++ namespaces
• Working with global variables
• Adding convenience functions for debugging
• A word about inline
• Exercises

Week 3, session 1: advanced string formatting, structs & classes

• Advanced string formatting
• Composite data types
• Classes
• Getters & setters
• Getters & setters - const methods
• Exercises

Week 3, session 2: more on classes

• Class construction and destruction
• The class destructor
• Exercises

Week 4, session 1: functional MRI project

• The PGM format
• Compiler warnings: signedness
• Type conversion
• Representing multi-dimensional data

Week 4, session 2: using external libraries, operator overloading

• Command-line handling
• Using external libraries
• How to use the terminal_graphics library
• Operator overloading
• Overloading the bracket operator
• Overloading the subscript operator
• Overloading the insertion operator
• Friend functions

Week 5, session 1: template programming

• C++ template functions
• Considerations when using template functions
• Multiple arguments for template functions
• Class templates in C++
• Polymorphism

Week 5, session 2: pointers, iterators and lambda expressions

• Pointers
• C-style arrays
• Pointer arithmetic
• C-style strings
• The command-line arguments
• STL iterators
• How to use iterators with STL algorithms
• Lambda expressions

Week 6, session 1: robot arm project, inheritance

• Inheritance
• Designing the Segment base class
• Type aliasing
• Writing our first derived class
• The this pointer
• Accessing private members of base class

Week 6, session 2: abstract classes, class destructor, finalise robot arm project

• Pure virtual methods and abstract classes
• Runtime polymorphism
• Object lifetime
• The class destructor
• Reading text line-by-line
• The std::getline() function
• std::stringstream: treating a string as a stream

Week 7, session 1: OOP design and principles

• OOP core principles
• Abstraction
• Encapsulation
• Inheritance
• Polymorphism
• Compile-time polymorphism
• Run-time polymorphism
• Relationships between classes
• Dependency
• Association: aggregation
• Association: composition
• Inheritance
• OOP design
• Design principles
• The SOLID principles
• Favor Composition over Inheritance
• Don’t repeat yourself
• You ain’t gonna need it!
• Keep It Simple, Stupid (KISS)

Week 7, session 2: Resource and memory management

• Memory management
• The stack
• Recursive functions
• The heap
• New & delete
• The null pointer
• What can go wrong with memory management?
• Memory leaks
• Dangling pointers and references
• Double free
• Memory management in modern C++
• Object ownership and lifetime
• RAII: Resource Acquisition Is Initialisation
• The copy constructor and assignment operator
• Smart pointers
• Storing objects in the context of inheritance
• Object slicing
• Vector of base class objects
• The std::reference_wrapper class
• A vector of smart pointers