Unit 12: Ship It Like a Professional

No new Java construct is taught in this unit. It pays the debt every performance task has carried since Unit 1, which is that the programs worked but nobody proved it, documented it, reviewed it, measured it, or could talk about it to a stranger deciding whether to hire them. The twenty lessons run a full build: pitch and scope, a design document and class map, four build days, designing test cases before trusting the code, debugging on purpose, a mid-unit checkpoint that asks whether it runs and what is missing, output validation, an efficiency analysis, Javadoc, code review given and received, Certiport preparation, resume and portfolio, and interview practice.

The performance task is The Portfolio Build. One application taken end to end with at least three classes the student designed, at least one inheritance or interface relationship that earns its place, data that persists to a file and reloads, exception handling including one custom exception, validation on every user supplied value, Javadoc on every public class and method, and readable output. Evidence includes a fifteen case test plan with actual results recorded, the efficiency analysis, the code review received with a written response to every finding, the review given to a classmate, a daily build log, the portfolio entry, a one page resume, the career plan with a Certiport gap plan, and the presentation.

The heaviest criterion is the code review received and the response to it, on the stated grounds that it is the only criterion that cannot be faked alone. This is also the only unit that names the certification examination to students, at Lesson 16, where they map the objective domains onto code they wrote themselves, sit a timed practice set, and produce a gap plan. JUnit is named once so students recognise the word and is not installed; tests here are a written test plan plus a main method harness a non-expert teacher can support.

The unit runs 20 instructional days.