After a gap of a year PAFSD is again running on-campus at Portsmouth and so I'm reactivating the blog ...
Last year the unit only ran as a collaborative unit with St Patricks International College and as a referral unit for distance learning students.
This year (February 2009) we are back to all 3 versions running and, for the first time ever, running simultaneously. Another difference this year is that all the materials will be moved into the university's new VLE: Victory.
Friday, February 06, 2009
Thursday, March 08, 2007
Week 4
This week we discussed Factory Method, Adapter and Iterator plus made a start on Visitor.
Numbers were up a bit on last week and we used the Postgraduate Common Room for our session which was a nicer space than the class room for a seminar - I just hope we didn't disturb the other students in there.
6 students have now linked their blogs into this one via the comments link. Interestingly however they aren't linking in on the current week but on the week that first catches their eye.
I have now added Dr Sri's introductory patterns lectures to the unit web page which should be of help to the St Patrick's students.
Numbers were up a bit on last week and we used the Postgraduate Common Room for our session which was a nicer space than the class room for a seminar - I just hope we didn't disturb the other students in there.
6 students have now linked their blogs into this one via the comments link. Interestingly however they aren't linking in on the current week but on the week that first catches their eye.
I have now added Dr Sri's introductory patterns lectures to the unit web page which should be of help to the St Patrick's students.
Thursday, March 01, 2007
Week 3
This week I've seen both the UoP students and the St Patricks students and given out the coursework to them all
Here in UoP we had a seminar looking at some of the material written by Richard Gabriel in his book Patterns of Software*. We had a good discussion about computing and patterns and then followed that up by looking at the Strategy pattern in some detail and an overview of Factory Method which we will come back to next week.
At St Patricks we concentrated on the coursework and I answered a wealth of questions about it. I also talked a little bit about the MVC pattern and about QWAN.
There is a huge range of material on the web about MVC (Model-View-Controller) including:
One of the classic papers on MVC is that by Steve Burbeck originally written in 1987:
For a discussion on QWAN, the Bead Game, symmetries, centers and carpets see: "The Bead Game, Rugs and Beauty" in Gabriel's book Patterns of Software (ibid) * . In addition Wikipedia gives a good overview of the concept of Quality Without a Name (QWAN).
And for something on the technical aspects of Qwan and pattern symmetries for software see James Coplien's symmetry papers at: http://users.rcn.com/jcoplien/bibliography.html
After my class at St Patricks Dr Sri gave me a copy of some of his lecture material and I will in the next few days add it into the PAFSD unit website.
Here in UoP we had a seminar looking at some of the material written by Richard Gabriel in his book Patterns of Software*. We had a good discussion about computing and patterns and then followed that up by looking at the Strategy pattern in some detail and an overview of Factory Method which we will come back to next week.
At St Patricks we concentrated on the coursework and I answered a wealth of questions about it. I also talked a little bit about the MVC pattern and about QWAN.
There is a huge range of material on the web about MVC (Model-View-Controller) including:
- Model-View-Controller from ootips
- Model View Controller from the WikiWikiWeb
- Model-view-controller from Wikipedia
One of the classic papers on MVC is that by Steve Burbeck originally written in 1987:
- Applications Programming in Smalltalk-80(TM): How to use Model-View-Controller(MVC)
- And for some history about the development of the MVC pattern try:
- MVC XEROX PARC 1978-79
For a discussion on QWAN, the Bead Game, symmetries, centers and carpets see: "The Bead Game, Rugs and Beauty" in Gabriel's book Patterns of Software (ibid) * . In addition Wikipedia gives a good overview of the concept of Quality Without a Name (QWAN).
And for something on the technical aspects of Qwan and pattern symmetries for software see James Coplien's symmetry papers at: http://users.rcn.com/jcoplien/bibliography.html
After my class at St Patricks Dr Sri gave me a copy of some of his lecture material and I will in the next few days add it into the PAFSD unit website.
* Gabriel, R.P., (1996) Patterns of software: Tales from the software community, Oxford University Press, ISBN: 0195121236 - also available to download from Richard Gabriel's web site Dreamsongs
Monday, February 26, 2007
The last couple of weeks
Having finally completed my marking I'm now playing catch-up on my blogs.
PAFSD got off to a good start 2 weeks ago - numbers at Portsmouth are a nice size for a final year option but still not the 20+ the department prefers and I've yet to hear the numbers at St Patricks.
Here in Portsmouth we spent the first lecture looking at what the unit would be about and then I gave a lecture introducing the patterns and their history.
Last week, in the first half of the lecture, we did an exercise on using a pattern catalogue which give students an opportunity to look at Alexander's pattern catalogue and to consider how you might pick patterns for a project. I hope to do this exercise with the St Patrick's students tomorrow morning.
In the second half of the lecture we looked at two software patterns: Template Method and Memento. I then asked the students to look at Strategy and Factory Method for next week plus do some reading from Gabriel's book:
PAFSD got off to a good start 2 weeks ago - numbers at Portsmouth are a nice size for a final year option but still not the 20+ the department prefers and I've yet to hear the numbers at St Patricks.
Here in Portsmouth we spent the first lecture looking at what the unit would be about and then I gave a lecture introducing the patterns and their history.
Last week, in the first half of the lecture, we did an exercise on using a pattern catalogue which give students an opportunity to look at Alexander's pattern catalogue and to consider how you might pick patterns for a project. I hope to do this exercise with the St Patrick's students tomorrow morning.
In the second half of the lecture we looked at two software patterns: Template Method and Memento. I then asked the students to look at Strategy and Factory Method for next week plus do some reading from Gabriel's book:
Gabriel, R.P., (1996) Patterns of software: Tales from the software community, Oxford University Press, ISBN: 0195121236 - also available to download from Richard Gabriel's web site Dreamsongs
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
