Lecture 1 : Introduction to Software Engineering and associated complexities, OOP overview, grouping and other odds and ends

The first lecture conducted by Mr. Harsha dealt with going back to OOP (Object Oriented Programing) and its fundamentals of design. The deviation of the subject matter from the previous lectures where we were discussing about the need for mathematical basis and about OCL was a surprise.

Several in class activities were conducted in an effort to clarify to the students of the proper need for modeling. It was clear by the end of those that different people would model the same problem in several ways depending on their domain understanding. i.e. they will use the head knowledge to bring about the design. This of course we must understand is detrimental to any proper design, as it will create ambiguities in the documents outlining the design.

If careful observation was made at the end of the day we can see that this lecture looked at the need for a proper design basis (i.e. a mathematical basis perhaps as outlined in an earlier lecture) when it comes to OOP.

The slides used for the presentation highlighted why software was complex, (and also the reason why software engineers are purportedly receiving higher pay) due to.

• Complexity of Problem domain
• Development process management
• Flexibility
• Contradictory requirements
• User/Developer mis-communication

At the end of the day it goes without saying that the vehicle of communication within which we will be learning about Advanced Software Engineering would be OOP. So its fair to expect that during the course of this module we will be seeing aspects of(hmm…)

• Object Oriented Analysis
• Object Oriented Designing

So during the last bit of the lecture there was a re-cap of earlier learned fundamentals present in OOP. These are:

• Abstraction
• Encapsulation
• Modularity
• Hierarchy

The day concluded with groups being made out so that they will be presenting different topics during the rest of the module.

So ended the lecture where over 100 students were in a room designed to hold 64. (no pun or complaint or offense intended)

P.s. we were all asked to blog about the lecture as well as create facebook accounts and groups for the lecture. Hence the blog post. :)