Java Case Study

Lecturer: Dr M. Richards

No. of lectures: 4

This course is a prerequisite for the Group Project (Part II (General)).

Aims

The aim of this course is show how to design, implement and debug medium size Java programs. Case studies will be used for illustration, the main one being an animated 3-D sundial.

Lectures

• Introduction. Differences between small and large programs. Keeping complexity under control. Debugging strategies. Introduction to the sundial case study and outline of the Java classes used.

• Displaying the scene. Geometry of the scene and coordinate transformations. Treatment of text and graphics. Painting using double buffering.

• Controlling the animation. Controlling the sundial using the mouse and keyboard. Dealing with events and interacting with various AWT components. Multi-threading and synchronisation. Mathematics of sundials and the equation of time.

• Discussion and second case study. Portability issues, fonts, differences between Internet Explorer, Netscape and Appletviewer. If time permits, other case studies will be presented.

Objectives

At the end of the course students should

• be able to design and implement a well-structured medium-sized Java program

• should be able to debug such a program, and

• should be aware of possible machine dependencies in the program.

Recommended books

Flanagan, F. (1997). Java in a nutshell. O'Reilly.
Eckel, B. (1998). Thinking in Java. Prentice-Hall.