COMP 313: Object-Oriented Design

Course Information

About

Object-orientation continues to be a dominant approach to software development. This intermediate programming-intensive course studies the use of classes and objects with an emphasis on collaboration among objects.

Description

Object-orientation continues to be a dominant approach to software development. This intermediate programming-intensive course studies the use of classes and objects with an emphasis on collaboration among objects.

Overall Series of Object-Oriented Courses

COMP 313: Object-Oriented Design / COMP 413: Intermediate Object-Oriented Development is also a prerequisite for other advanced software courses. Students interested in advanced software courses are encouraged to take COMP 313: Object-Oriented Design / COMP 413: Intermediate Object-Oriented Development as soon as they have completed COMP 271: Data Structures I so as to be eligible for these further courses.

Course Topics

  • Data Structures of various types – linear vs. nonlinear, indexing vs. non-indexing, position vs. value-oriented

  • Advanced Java, e.g. interfaces, annotations, exceptions, generics, collections, boxing/unboxing, array objects

  • Object Modeling – UML, use cases and activity diagrams, class diagrams, archetypes, interaction diagrams

  • Design by contract, interfaces, refactoring & generalization, design patterns (Adapter, Decorator, Composite, Strategy, Iterator, Abstract Factory, Visitor, …)

  • Agile Development Process – evolutionary design, test-driven development, refactoring, …

  • Tools – Eclipse, Subversion, JUnit, JMock, Ant, …

  • Techniques – object pooling, garbage collection, performance profiling (NetBeans)

Outcome

A thorough understanding of the principles of object-orientation: abstraction, delegation, inheritance, and polymorphism; exposure to basic design patterns; programming experience in mainstream object-oriented languages such as C++ and Java.

You will take your software development abilities to the next level by building on your knowledge of data structures.

You will learn to design and implement more complex programs using good software engineering practices, including:

  • Designing with interfaces and composition

  • Design patterns

  • Refactoring

  • Test-driven development (TDD)

Syllabi

See the Current Course Syllabi.