Second Lecture

3 more students joined the class - all with java experience - but one or two of last week's students seem to have gone missing. Caught the new students up with the unit during the break in the middle and asked them to contact me if when reading through the material it didn't make sense.

This week we looked at the Memento and Template Method patterns, we then did some work how to use a pattern catalogue (see link below) based around Alexander's pattern catalogue - this meant taking all the copies of Alexander's book out of the library and I must make sure I return them in the next day or two so the students can reference them.

I've asked them to do some reading for next week when (in addition to looking at more software patterns) I will ask them to discuss what they have read. The reading material is:

Patterns: A Way to Reuse Expertise by Linda Rising

“Pattern Languages” pp 45-55 in “Patterns of Software” by R.P.Gabriel, 1996 OUP

The Quality Without a Name” pp 33-43 and "The Bead Game, Rugs and Beauty" pp 71-95  in “Patterns of Software” by R.P.Gabriel, 1996 OUP

Gabriel's book is also available on his website at: http://www.dreamsongs.com/NewFiles/PatternsOfSoftware.pdf

The rest of Gabriel's website Dreamsongs is also worth a look - lots of stuff about the art of writing software (check out the list at the bottom of his home page as well as the Essays link) plus some of his poetry - he has a Masters degree in Poetry as well as a PhD in Computer Science.

First Lecture

Turn out for the first lecture was low - about 6 students missing who are on the class list.

We covered unit admin stuff (topics to be covered, assessment, booklist) and covered the introductory lecture on patterns (see the link below). The unit admin stuff took longer than anticipated so the exercise on using a pattern catalogue will wait until next week.

All the students have UML experience and are comfortable in programming in either Java or C++. Also all are from CSSE split roughly evenly between Computing, Computer Science and Software Engineering.

We talked about the assessment: everyone seemed to prefer some choice in the assessment eg do 5 out of 6 things rather than do 5 out of 5 things. Little enthusiasm for working in pairs but no one objected to the possibility.

Over the next week I've asked everyone to investigate some of the unit web page links on patterns.