Oregon State CS 362: Software Engineering II
CS 362 is the verification half of the software engineering sequence — unit testing, test-driven development, coverage, debugging strategy, and continuous integration. It's the course that converts testing from the thing skipped before deadlines into an engineering discipline.
Fennie is independent and not affiliated with Oregon State University. This is an unofficial study guide.
Build my CS 362 study planWhat makes it hard
Testing well is harder than it sounds: choosing what to test, constructing edge cases, and judging coverage requires adversarial thinking about your own code, which is an unnatural act that needs deliberate practice. The conceptual material — coverage criteria, test design techniques — is also exactly the kind of detail that proctored exams reward precision on and punish vibes.
What you'll cover
- • Unit testing frameworks
- • Test-driven development
- • Code coverage and test adequacy
- • Debugging strategies
- • Continuous integration
- • Random and property-based testing
The CS 362 study guide
How to study for Oregon State CS 362, step by step.
- 1
Write tests for code you didn't write
Testing your own code inherits your own blind spots. Practice on others' functions — it builds the adversarial eye the course is actually trying to install.
- 2
Learn the coverage criteria precisely
Statement, branch, and path coverage differ in exam-relevant ways, and the questions are built on the differences. Know what each criterion catches and what it provably misses.
- 3
Do TDD honestly at least once
Test first, fail, implement, pass — the full cycle on a small project, without cheating the order. The exam questions about TDD assume you've felt the rhythm, not just read it.
- 4
Hunt edge cases as a drill
Empty inputs, boundaries, duplicates, overflow — build a personal checklist and run it against every function you meet. Edge-case construction is the course's most exam-visible skill.
- 5
Cover the concepts with Fennie
Upload your CS 362 materials and Fennie's Daily Plan paces testing practice and concept review across the quarter, generating coverage and test-design quizzes from your actual coursework ahead of the proctored exams. Free to start.
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How Fennie helps with CS 362
Fennie's Daily Plans pace CS 362's two halves — hands-on testing practice and precise conceptual material — so neither gets sacrificed to a work week. Use chat to reason through what a test suite misses and why, and drill generated quizzes on coverage criteria, the exam topic where precision pays most.
FAQ
Is CS 362 easier than CS 361?
Most postbacc students find it less logistically stressful — smaller-scale teamwork, more individual skill-building — but conceptually denser. The coverage and test-design material rewards exact understanding, which makes it more exam-driven than 361.
What testing tools does CS 362 use?
Expect a mainstream unit-testing framework and CI tooling, with specifics varying by term and language. The principles — test design, coverage, TDD discipline — transfer across all of them, and they're what's graded.
Why does CS 362 matter for jobs?
Because writing tests is most of what junior engineers do in their first months, and interviewers increasingly probe testing instincts. The edge-case checklist and TDD habits from 362 show up directly in take-home assessments and code review.
Pass CS 362 with a plan, not a cram
Upload your CS 362 materials and Fennie generates a Daily Plan paced to your deadline — plus chat, flashcards, and quizzes built from the actual course content.
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CS 161 — Introduction to Computer Science I
CS 161 is Oregon State's first programming course — variables, control flow, functions, basic data structures, and program design — currently taught in Python after the curriculum moved away from C++. It opens both the Corvallis CS degree and the Ecampus postbacc, where for many students it's the first code they've ever written.
CS 162 — Introduction to Computer Science II
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CS 225 — Discrete Structures in Computer Science
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CS 261 — Data Structures
CS 261 covers the core data structures — dynamic arrays, linked lists, stacks, queues, hash tables, trees, heaps, and graphs — with implementation assignments and complexity analysis throughout. In the Ecampus postbacc it's taught in Python (older blog posts reference the earlier C version), and it's the technical-interview foundation for the whole program.