Do not do this unit unless you are absolutely sure of it. Doing FIT1051 prior to this is not compulsory but highly recommended. The first few weeks are okay, as it is a practical way to try out the concepts that were taught. However, after that comes the assignments, which greatly ramps up in difficulty. The assignments are extremely time consuming, with little to no feedback provided. Furthermore, assignment 3 is built on top of Assignment 2, which feedback and marks were returned too late to be of any use. Weekly reading consists of copy-pasted Java documentation, with no effort put in whatsoever. Had a terrible time in this unit. Others on Reddit have also shared this experience.

I really enjoyed this unit. The lab work is fairly straightforward and allows for your own interpretation and approach to the problem, and the final project (provided you have a good partner) is fantastic. The feeling of this unit is as if you were working on a piece of software for a real client, which very few units have been able to do thus far into my degree.

It's an extremely valuable unit thanks to the Java skills and OO concepts it covers, but the way it's run is an absolute mess. Assignments were released late (although with the due date pushed back to compensate) and were marked in quite a haphazard way - the specific criteria are only given after each assignment is marked, and on multiple occasions our tutor had overlooked the presence of a feature or line of documentation in our project. Definitely worth doing, but be prepared for headaches.