IT643 — Software Design and Testing

Instructor: Ankush Chander | Institute: DA University

Framing Question

If an AI can write, debug, and refactor code on demand — what is left for a software engineer to do?

This course argues that the scarce skill is shifting from producing code to choosing what to build and judging whether the machine got it right.

What You Will Learn

Module 1: Requirements Discovery

Module 2: Taming Complexity

Module 3: Testing

Module 4: Design beyond a class

Labs

Lab	What you do	Marks	Due date
1: Make it multiplayer	Add a second player to another group's snake game, then measure what the change cost	40	Wednesday, 12:00 PM
2_3: Detect code smell	Detect code smells in the snake game codebase	40	Monday(24/Aug/2026), 11:59 PM
4: The tests you cannot write	Try to test five rules of your own snake game, then build the seam that makes one of them possible	40	Saturday(26/Sep/2026), 11:59 PM

Project

Project evaluation — ceiling, deliverables, and how it is scored. Viva immediately after the end-sem exam.

How This Site Works

Lecture pages — Full Markdown notes with interactive questions (??? hint blocks to click open).
Labs — Assignment briefs with deliverables and marking criteria.
Slides — Clickable presentation decks for select lectures (powered by reveal.js / mkdocs-slides).
Lecture Index — Complete topic map at lectures/README.md.

Prerequisites

Familiarity with at least one programming language
Basic understanding of how software systems work
No prior formal software engineering training required

"The AI did it" is not a defense — your name is on the change. Practice specification and verification as distinct skills.