CSc Fall 2005 Homework 5

Section P (Tuesday and Thursday): due at beginning of class Tuesday, November 1.

Section G (Monday and Wednesday): due at beginning of class Monday, October 31.

This homework is based on the Model/View/Controller (MVC) example provided by Joe Bergin of Pace University. You have the code on the CD provided at the beginning of the course, and I have distributed paper copies of an article by Bergin. The full paper is also  available at http://csis.pace.edu/~bergin/mvc/mvcgui.html. (221P students got a condensed version, minus the code.)

You need to understand the concepts of the example, in terms of:

• The way the program uses the MVC design pattern: what is the Model? what are the Views? How do they communicate with each other?
• The event-driven nature of the application: nothing happens until the user takes an action.
• The Java features involved: the Observer interface and the Observable class; the difference between a superclass and an interface.
• How the Model knows what Views to update; registering as a listener.
• The Best Practices style of classes: all variables private; getters and/or setters provided as needed.

Your understanding of these concepts will be tested on the midterm. You do not submit anything about them as part of the homework.

You will NOT be asked to explain the details of how the vari0us displays are created.

What you submit for the homework is the code for a different View of the temperature, with some kind of control for changing temperature.  Samples are provided below, and will be demonstrated in class. This is a free-form assignment. Learn something about GUI building, and do it. Have fun! Find a creative way to display temperature, and make the code work.

You realize that this assignment was done in 221 last spring. Students from those sections can be found. I take it for granted that you understand how unwise it would be to copy their work. You know that you would learn nothing that way. And of course I am not blind, and if I were to discover outright copying--which I am sure I will not--the students submitting such work would get zero on the homework.

These samples are among the least imaginative that students have submitted on this HW. A lower bound, if you will, on what is expected of you. I'll demo some of the more exciting ones in class--some go far beyond anything I would require.

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