CST338 Module 6 - UML in the workplace

6.1 What experience do you have with UML diagrams?

A UML Diagram is a diagram based on the UML (Unified Modeling Language) that visually represents a system along with its main actors, roles, actions, artifacts, or classes. For this class, we used a class diagram to represent the object oriented programming that we use for our projects. Prior to this class, I have very little experience designing my own UML diagrams but have been exposed to seeing them when I was learning different data structures in class. Here's an example of what one looks like.

6.2 Are they used at your workplace?

I have not worked at a tech company before so I don't know but from what I'm hearing, lots of professional companies use UML diagrams to plan out the work. This includes companies that do other work besides software engineering since there many different types of UML diagrams available such as timing diagrams, communication diagrams, and state diagrams.

6.3 Have you done multithreading in any language before?

Multithreading is the ability of a CPU to provide multiple threads of execution at the same time. To create threads in Java, you have to create a new class that extends the Thread class and instantiate the class. This extension must override the run() method and call the start() method in order to begin thread execution. 

In the run() method, you will define a new code that constitutes the new thread. this run() method can call other methods, use classes, declare variables similar to the main thread. Extending the thread class doesn't allow us to extend any other classes since java doesn't support multiple inheritance. 

For this week, we created a Timer class object which extends the Thread class to use for our game. It starts and stops simulating a timer for our game. This is the first time that I'm using multi-threading and getting to know a little about what it is. 

6.4 Did you find Patterns to be helpful? 

Design patterns are very helpful. They are well-described solution to common problems that occur during development. They are great because they represent the best practices that evolved over periods of time by experienced developers and promotes re usability of code.

6.5 Summary

This week we have to change our design patterns from last week and create a timed build game in which we use a MVC concept of programming. This assignment didn't require a lot of coding but just transferring code from last week and making it fit into the MVC pattern of development. The only thing that we had to do was create the logic for the new game.