Ravi S. Iyer's Software Lab. Courses

Last updated on 21st July 2016

This blog has been created to offer the content of software lab. courses taught by Ravi S. Iyer, Software Consultant, Puttaparthi, India, while he was offering free service as Honorary Staff/Honorary Faculty/Visiting Faculty to a Mathematics & Computer Science department in a deemed university in Andhra Pradesh, India, from 2003 to 2011. To know more about software background of Ravi S. Iyer, please visit: http://eklavyasai.blogspot.in/p/about-me.html.

The course contents in this blog/site typically include:

• Course structure
• Course book(s); Most courses are based on a primary course book
• Reference books and other resources, if any
• Teaching material (could be prepared by me and/or be a re-use of (reference to) external publicly available material usually from US university websites)
• Assignments

Given below are the course contents for regular courses:

1. C++ Programming
2. Advanced Unix Programming
3. Unix Network (socket) Programming including pthread Programming
4. Minix Kernel Internals
5. Linux Kernel Customization – Mini Course
6. Java Web Programming (including HTML) – 2005 Course Report
7. Migration from C++ to C# – Mini Course
8. ASP.Net Web Programming in C# – Course Report

Given below are miscellaneous topics

1. Advice to Fresh CS Graduates & Post-Graduates on Industry Jobs; Prototype vs. production programming
2. Software development mini-project lab. courses – a report

Please note that science and engineering/technology departments of some, if not most/all of, UGC (University Grants Commission) or AICTE (All India Council for Technical Education) regulated educational institutions in India use a model of theory courses + lab. courses. In the deemed university that I was associated with, at Ist M.Tech.(CS) level it was usually 5 theory courses + 2 lab. courses in a semester, and somewhat similar at M.Sc. (Maths) level too. though perhaps it was only 1 lab. course per semester. In this deemed university, access to computer facilities for limited time was guaranteed for lab. courses teaching as well as student practice in the time table (the time table had 6 periods of almost an hour each from Mon. to Sat., if I recall correctly) with some additional time beyond the time table being allotted (evening hours). So, access to computer facilities was a significant constraint. During some of the later years of my stint, laptops were permitted for M.Tech. (CS) students and that reduced the constraints somewhat. [Please note that access to computer facilities in other UGC/AICTE institutions may be different from this deemed university that I was associated with. I am quite sure that it would be for significantly longer periods of time in the reputed UGC/AICTE institutions in the country.]

This blog is owned and operated by Ravi S. Iyer. This blog aims to share useful output of Ravi as a teacher of software lab. courses/programming courses.

Feedback from Former Students

A former student who was taught the C++ Programming course by me in the deemed university in Andhra Pradesh, India, wrote the following over email on March 18th 2014 (modified slightly to fix a couple of minor grammatical errors):

It is great that you have shared the C++ programming teaching material prepared by you on your blog. I really hope that people make use of it for I know how useful it could be. I can say this as a direct beneficiary of this, and today that is what fills my bank account at the end of every month.

I just hope and pray that Swami gives you the strength and determination to keep up the good work. I also think that I too can take a tiny part of the credit in this endeavour of you putting up these slides, as I was perhaps one of the many who would have suggested that you put these slides up in some forum accessible to the students’ community. Thank you for considering the request.

Another former student who had been taught Advanced Unix Programming and Unix Network Programming courses by me, wrote me on 22nd March 2014:

These courses (Advanced Unix Programming and Unix Network Programming) went a long way in helping me land my job at Alcatel-Lucent. I had a one-on-one interview with my hiring manager that was entirely on Unix. After joining the company I learned that this person(manager) was a big time ‘Unix fan’. It was very satisfying to have done well in that interview. On the job, we completely relied on Solaris Unix based servers and the concepts of processes and threads gained from these course(s), went a long way in helping me grasp the software.
Thank you Ravi Sir.

Feedback from a Teacher

An Assistant Professor of a deemed university wrote me in June 2014 that the slides and external links on this website/blog of mine is very useful. He further wrote that he is using them to teach BCA (Bachelor of Computer Applications) students.