INF1B: Week 6: Abstraction and Modularisation; Creating classes

Week Highlights

By the end of this week, you should understand:

From Lecture 10:

• why abstraction and modularisation are important
• What encapsulation is for
• When and why you should use private access modifiers
• What different kinds of modifiers there are and how they restrict access
• What immutable data types and when and how they can be useful

From Lecture 11: 

• The three basic parts of a class
• What a client of a class is
• What test-first design methodology is and why you might want to use it
• Why you might want to create your own toString method
• What happens if you don’t write a constructor for your class

Lecture 10: Abstraction and Modularisation

• Slides: Lecture 10 Slides

Lecture 10 ➡ Objects First: read Chapter 3. Object Interaction.

Lecture 11: Class Definition

• Slides: Lecture 11 Slides

Lecture 11 ➡ Objects First: read Chapter 2. Understanding Class Definitions.

Lecture 11 ➡ Java Tutorial: read Chapter 4. Classes and Objects, stopping at Nested Classes.

Tutorial: 

No tutorial

Lab exercises

This week's lab exercises cover writing your own classes. There are two warmup exercises and four core exercises.

What should I be doing with assessment?

Assignment 1 is due to be submitted by 1200 on Thursday, so if you are still working on that, make sure to finish by then.