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COSC 40943: Software Engineering

Fall 2026, section 020. MWF 10:00 - 10:50 AM, SWR LH3. Instructor: Bingyang Wei, b.wei@tcu.edu, TUC 341D, office hours MW 11:00 - 12:00 or by appointment.

Week 10: testing Monday, then two studio days for your proving slice

Monday Oct 26 is the testing lecture. The deck is on the Schedule.

Wednesday Oct 28 and Friday Oct 30 are both studio, run by your TAs. Install the new /design and /implement commands from course-templates, merge your proving slice's design, then build, review, and merge the slice. Find your team's row in the table on the Studio page before Wednesday; it is your plan for both days.

Checkpoint 2 moves to week 11: a 20-minute demo with your TA, in a slot your team books outside class by Fri Nov 6. Book it in your team's Slack channel by the end of Friday's studio. The checklist has not changed.

New dates: assignment 3 is due Fri Nov 6 and assignment 4 Fri Nov 13. Checkpoint 3 is Fri Nov 20.

What this course is

Software engineering assumed for fifty years that humans perform every engineering activity. That assumption no longer holds. AI can read requirements, generate design and code, write tests, review pull requests, and analyze logs.

So this course asks a harder question than the usual one: what should software engineering become when AI is a permanent member of every development team?

You will answer it by doing it. In a team of six, for a real external client, you will build real software using a method called spec-driven, agent-assisted development: write a specification the agent can build against, prove your architecture with one working slice, then fan out one use case at a time. The agent writes a great deal of the code. You remain responsible for all of it.

This is also where your Senior Design project starts. It continues into COSC 40993 in spring 2027.

Start here

  1. Read the Syllabus. It is your first course reading, and start with what this course expects of your time. Plan your semester around this course rather than fitting it into the gaps.
  2. Read Working with AI before you touch the first assignment.
  3. Work through the setup steps on Resources early. Getting Project Pulse running is assignment 1, due Fri Sep 4; Friday's studio is your team's first working hour, not an install clinic.
  4. Skim the Schedule so you know where the term is going.

How the week works

Day What happens
Monday, Wednesday Lecture. A software engineering topic, demonstrated live on Project Pulse, a real Vue.js and Spring Boot application.
Friday Studio. Same room, whole class, TA-led. Your team applies the week's move to your own client project. Three Fridays in the term are your checkpoint presentation; Checkpoint 2 is a demo you book with your TA.
Outside class Team working meetings, client meetings, and building.

See it on Project Pulse Wednesday. Do it on your project Friday, with your agent translating Project Pulse's choices to your stack and your team deciding (how).

The through-lines

Four ideas recur in every topic. If you remember nothing else in five years, remember these.

  • Specification over conversation. The durable artifact is the spec in your repository, not a chat transcript. When the code and the spec disagree, one of them is a defect.
  • The delegation boundary. What goes to the agent, what stays human, and why the line moves by topic.
  • Context engineering. The scarce skill is supplying what the agent cannot infer, and knowing when you have supplied enough.
  • Trust, then verify. AI speeds up transformation. It does not lower the engineering bar.