Elements of Software Construction
Description:
This course introduces fundamental principles and techniques of software development. Students learn how to write software that is safe from bugs, easy to understand, and ready for change.
Topics include specifications and invariants; testing, test-case generation, and coverage; state machines; abstract data types and representation independence; design patterns for object-oriented programming; concurrent programming, including message passing and shared concurrency, and defending against races and deadlock; and functional programming with immutable data and higher-order functions.
From the MIT OpenCourseware site.
Of interest to anyone writing topic map software.
It should also be of interest to anyone evaluating how software shapes what subjects we can talk about and how we can talk about them. Data structures have the same implications.
Not necessary to undertake such investigations in all cases. There are many routine uses for common topic map software.
Being able to see when the edges of a domain don’t quite fit or there may be gaps in coverage for an information system, are necessary skills for non-routine cases.