I tried the first couple of weeks of the Building Web Applications, but I won’t be continuing with the module.
I was hoping that there’d be some deep insight into the pros and cons of the Java web applications and the JSF framework and RESTful Web Services, but it was pretty clear that we weren’t going to cover enough ground to make the course worthwhile. There’s also some pretty idiosyncratic approaches to writing Java code going on too, so it was all a bit strange.
I could have carried on through the module as it should have been easy to get a good grade but then I’m doing the course for the challenge and opportunities to learn more than for the letters after my name. It’d be a shame to lose out on learning something else.
The software engineering modules have been a little disappointing, to be honest – where I found the Computer Science modules assumed a challenging knowledge of maths and computing, the software engineering modules seem to assume little or no prior knowledge. Maybe that’s just my perception, having been working on-and-off in software development for the past 4-5 years.
On the bright side, I did get a lead on what looks like an excellent book to get stuck into JSF 1.2 in Core JavaServer Faces by Geary and Horstmann.
That means that I just need to revise the Patterns for e-Business course foe this set of exams. In Autumn I’ll continue with Computer Science modules and it’ll be once more unto the breach with the whole logic thing, so I’ve pulled a couple of books out of the library to get started with that again.
Paul Brabban Computer Science, Development, MSc
The material for day 4 focussed on Business Process Modelling. This sits orthogonally to Patterns for e-Business, defining business functions over their architecture.
There are two notations for Business Processes put forward – BPMN and UML Use Case/Activity Diagrams. My part of the coursework assignment is to apply BPM to the johnlewis.com some processes on the website, for which I’ve chosen Activity Diagrams and Visual Paradigm for UML. I did take a look at the implementations of BPMN, but I found a familiar pattern – they either didn’t work or cost $$$. Fortunately, VP is still serving me well.
The lab session was spent working with my team on the coursework and setting up tasks for the rest of week. As we’re producing a large report and taking different sections, we’ve set up a Google Docs site to drop working drafts onto to help us collaborate. It’s the first time I’ve used Google Docs like this and so far I like it, it’s responsive, intuitive and it’s easy to share a folder with a group of people, so for this kind of work it’s looking good.
In other news, the marks for the Machine Learning module are in and I’m very happy to have passed! That’s two modules, or one-quarter of my MSc done.
Paul Brabban Computer Science, MSc
Today was hand-in day for the first part of this module’s coursework – to design a shop, based on four requirements, using Object-Oriented design principles. Specifically, we had to use the State, Strategy and Item Description patterns, although I also worked in a couple of other patterns I like – Decorator (solves problems of composing functionality using recursion) and Iterator (hides implementation details of collections behind a simple object you can only iterate over).
I quite enjoyed having a simple pet problem like this, with a real reason to work through some aspects of it. If you’re interested in having a go yourself, the assignment reminded me of the first pragprog Code Kata – Supermarket Pricing.
As a result of the coursework, I’ve found a UML tool I can live with – Visual Paradigm. I’ll probably do a bit of a review and compare with the other tools I tried soon, but suffice to say it was by some margin the most pleasant and easy-to-use tool of the 5 or 6 I tried. £40 needed to get rid of the invasive watermark, but it looks like when it comes to CASE tools you get what you pay for.
The lectures are proving tricky to keep on top of – the pace is kinda slow (maybe that’s just me), so I find myself struggling to maintain attention. Still, the lecture notes are very detailed, so I spent a a few hours reviewing last week’s notes creating myself some revision material. I’ve been using a piece of software called Freemind to do ‘mind-mapping’, something I found out about in a presentation by Steve Brett in last years’ unsheffield unconference. It seems to work pretty well for the way I do revision, here’s a screenshot if you’ve not seen a mind map before.
So anyway, it’s all good. Coursework part 2 starts now, two more lectures in this module.
Paul Brabban Computer Science, MSc