Who should attend: Software developers, architects, and programmers. You should understand basic object-oriented concepts, such as polymorphism and type versus interface inheritance, and have had some experience designing object-oriented systems. No prior knowledge of design patterns is required or assumed.

What you will learn: How to apply design patterns to your own object-oriented systems. You will gain experience using design patterns to solve real problems.

Designing object-oriented software is hard and designing reusable object-oriented software is even harder. Experience shows that many object-oriented systems exhibit recurring structures or "design patterns" of communicating and collaborating objects that promote extensibility, flexibility, and reusability.

This course describes a set of fundamental design patterns and, through a design scenario, demonstrates how to build reusable object-oriented software with them. The course covers the roles design patterns play in the object-oriented development process: how they provide a common vocabulary, reduce system complexity, and how they act as reusable architectural elements that contribute to an overall system architecture.

Doug Schmidt is an assistant professor of computer science at Washington University in St. Louis. His research focuses on design patterns, implementation, and experimental analysis of object-oriented techniques that facilitate the development of high-performance, real-time distributed object computing systems on parallel processing platforms running over high-speed networks. He is a co-editor on Pattern Languages of Program Design and editor-in-chief of the C++ Report.

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