CS 257: Software Design

• Read the Recurse Center's rules for collaborative learning.
• Read Joel Spolsky's article about Unicode, and skim Wikipedia re: Unicode, UTF-8, and UTF-16.

• The perspective: User-Centered Design (UCD). Skim the Wikipedia article and read the Introduction and Chapter 1 of Krug's Don't Make Me Think. The core idea of UCD is very simple (and central to Krug's book), but as you'll see from the Wikipedia article, it has accumulated a lot of formalism.
• The habit: Test-Driven Development (TDD). Skim the Wikipedia article. Lots of formalism here too.

• Chapters 2–5 (due Friday).
• Chapters 6 & 7 (due Monday).

• “The Commento”, from Steve McConnell's book Code Complete.
• The “Comments” section of Google's C++ style guide. Some of the recommendations are very specific to C++ (or to Google), but there's a rich set of ideas spread throughout the section that apply equally well to Python, Java, etc..

[Due F 5/15] Reading 7: “Assert Yourself”, from Steve Maguire's book Writing Solid Code, up through page 23 (stopping at “Are You Making Assumptions Again”, about ten pages total), and then skim the rest.

This is a chapter from an old book (1993), and its code examples are in a peculiarly Microsoftian version of the C language, but the core ideas here are still powerful. Read for ideas; there's a lot you can get out of the code examples from context and critical thinking, even if C is a mystery to you (which is fine). The chapter is long and technical, and the whole thing is worthwhile, but the key ideas are introduced in the first ten pages.

Followup reading:

• Why use assertions if you already have unit tests?
• Which is more important: assertions or unit tests?
• Assertions in Java

[Due M 5/18] Reading 8: object-oriented inheritance, and a first look at design patterns.

• Skim the Wikipedia article on inheritance in object-oriented programming, and any of the following tutorials: this one, this one, or this one.
• Read pages xxvii, xxix, and xxxi in Head First Design Patterns by Freeman, Robson, Sierra, and Bates.
• Read Chapter 1 in Head First Design Patterns.

Be ready to discuss: What is a design pattern? What are they for? Why would you want a catalog of them? What's confusing about this subject and about Chapter 1?

• Chapter 2 (Observer) in Head First Design Patterns.
• Chapter 5 (Singleton) in Head First Design Patterns.
• Various short articles on Model–View–Controller (MVC). Read the Wikipedia article and Tom Dalling's article with C++ examples. There are lots of other great, short explanations of this powerful pattern online. If you wish, you may read some others: here's one with examples in PHP, and here's another by the great Jeff Atwood.

• Hello World in JavaFX
• JavaFX tutorial

• Browse Chapters 12 (Patterns of Patterns; MVC) and 13 (Patterns in the Real World) in Head First Design Patterns.
• Read this Jeff Atwood / Joel Spolsky design-pattern counterpoint, as well as all the comments.