THE PROJECTS

Fourteen deliverables.
Every one earns its keep.

Every chapter ships one project. Every project takes a real apologetic question and turns it into rigorous code. Three difficulty tiers each; pick what suits you. The midterm (P8) and final (P14) are closed-book, closed-AI, 60-minute live exams.

P1 WEEKLY
Week 1 · Java

The Code Comprehension Brief

"What does it mean to read carefully?"

Reading code fluently — the senior engineer's primary skill →
P2 WEEKLY
Week 2 · Java

Spec Before Code

"What does it mean to make a promise and keep it?"

Pre/postconditions, invariants, Javadoc, signatures as contracts →
P3 WEEKLY
Week 3 · Java

The Robust Refactor

"How do we handle things going wrong?"

try/catch/finally, checked vs unchecked, custom exceptions, chaining →
P4 WEEKLY
Week 4 · Java

Test-First Calculator

"How do we know what is true?"

JUnit, Arrange/Act/Assert, TDD, unit vs integration →
P5 WEEKLY
Week 5 · Java

Sabotage Recovery

"How do we find what is wrong with ourselves?"

Stack traces, bisection, hypotheses, debugger vs printlns, when to rewrite →
P6 WEEKLY
Week 6 · Java

The Catechism Data Pipeline

"How is data the steward of truth?"

java.nio.file, reading text/CSV/JSON, writing data, parsing →
P7 WEEKLY
Week 7 · Java

Three Recursive Problems

"When does the part contain the whole?"

Base case + recursive case, mathematical and structural recursion, stack frames →
P8 MIDTERM
Week 8 · Java

Apologetics Catalog (MIDTERM)

"How do we organize the knowledge of the church?"

Map, Set, List interfaces; generics; the standard library you actually use →
P9 WEEKLY
Week 9 · Java

Spec → AI → Review

"Who is the author when two work together?"

The senior/junior model, what AI is good at and what it is not, hallucinated APIs →
P10 WEEKLY
Week 10 · Java

Two Prompts, Two Outcomes

"What is precise speech?"

Precision in prompts, constraints, in-prompt examples, the test-first prompt →
P11 WEEKLY
Week 11 · Java

Find the Bugs in AI's Code

"How do we test the spirits?"

Subtle wrong: off-by-one, null handling, ignored edges, slow algorithms, fake APIs →
P12 WEEKLY
Week 12 · Java

Design Before You Prompt

"What does it mean to build well?"

Decomposing problems before asking for code, single responsibility, interfaces, module shape →
P13 WEEKLY
Week 13 · Java

Drive AI to Green

"What is patience in correction?"

Diagnostic prompting, narrowing the search, showing tests, asking the right question →
P14 FINAL
Week 16 · Java

A Real Small Application (FINAL)

"What can a Christian engineer build?"

Capstone — a complete small application built with documented AI partnership →