Design Patterns in Java

This course aims to teach what design patterns are and how they can help to design well-structured, reusable object-oriented software.

It is acknowledged that designing reusable object-oriented software is hard. It involves finding pertinent objects, factoring them into classes at the right granularity, and then defining class interfaces and inheritance hierarchies and establishing appropriate relationships among them. This seems almost impossible and yet experienced object-oriented developers somehow manage to produce good designs. New developers, however, are often overwhelmed by the options available and may be tempted to fall back on non-object-oriented techniques.

This course is about transferring knowledge of design patterns which are the result of years of experience. This experience is captured in solutions consisting of recurring patterns of classes and communicating objects that solve specific problems in a way that is flexible, elegant and ultimately reusable. By learning these design patterns, developers will be able to apply them immediately without having to rediscover or reinvent them.

This course focuses on the design patterns listed in the original 'Gang of Four' book and delegates will learn to use them in real-life scenarios with hands-on practical exercises.

Note that we do not cover every pattern listed in detail, rather we select a subset in each category for detailed examination and have the delegates implement said patterns in Java code.

Exercises and examples are used throughout the course to give practical hands-on experience with the techniques covered.

The delegate will learn and acquire skills as follows:

• Describing and selecting design patterns
• Matching design patterns to scenarios
• Implementing creational patterns
• Implementing structural patterns
• Implementing behavioural patterns
• Identifying anti-patterns

Course Contents - DAY 1:

Session 1: INTRODUCTION

• Thinking Like a Computer
  
  • What is a Design Pattern?
  • Why use Design Patterns?
  • Categories of Design Pattern
  • The Gang of Four Design Pattern Catalogue

Session 2: CREATIONAL PATTERNS

• Singleton
• Factory Method
• Abstract Factory
• Builder
• Prototype
• Object Pool

Course Contents - DAY 2:

Session 3: STRUCTURAL PATTERNS

• Adapter
• Composite
• Proxy
• Flyweight
• Facade
• Bridge
• Decorator

Session 4: BEHAVIOURAL PATTERNS

• Template Method
• Strategy
• Observer
• Mediator

Course Contents - DAY 3:

Session 4: BEHAVIOURAL PATTERNS (CONT.)

• State
• Command
• Chain of Responsibility
• Iterator
• Interpreter
• Memento
• Visitor
• Null Object

Session 5: ANTI-PATTERNS

• God Class
• Dead Code
• Functional Decomposition
• Poltergeists
• Boat Anchor
• Old Yeller
• Dead End
• Spaghetti Code
• Clipboard Coding
• And more!

This Design Patterns in Java course is aimed at developers, designers, architects, and anyone else involved in the design and production of well-structured, reusable software written in Java or any other object-oriented language.

Delegates attending this course should be familiar with object-oriented principles and will be able to write simple applications in Java or an equivalent object-oriented language. This knowledge can be obtained by attendance on the pre-requisite Java Programming 1 or equivalent level course.