CPSCI 410: Senior Seminar

Hamilton College, Spring 2025

Welcome to software development, a field riddled with challenges, including planning, problem solving, execution, and client needs. It also calls for ethical and equity mindfulness due to diverse software user communities. In this course, you’ll undertake a software project for a local client. Through this project, you will engage in standard software engineering practices, draw on your existing computer science knowledge, expand into new frontiers of computing, and complete a project of significance that may even stand the test of time. This course is designed to follow as closely as possible the experience of a software engineering position in industry. The elements include: 1

• Working in small teams of 3–5 developers, with a rotating team lead and scribe
• Weekly meetings with a (non-technical) client • Weekly stand-up meetings with me
• Four substantial milestones throughout the semester, where each team:
  • Submits milestone materials
  • Gives a presentation to the class on their progress
  • Completes a thorough design and code review with me
  • Submits feedback for all team members
• A launch party, where each team presents their software to the department, campus community, and clients.