Announcement page for proposed OOP seminar/learning group in Durham/RTP, NC

This is a proposal to form a group of people who want to learn more about OOP (e.g. design patterns, delegation, polymorphism).

We will be self educating. People will pick a topic to prepare and present it for the education of the group. Topics will not be assigned - you pick your own. If two people have prepared the same topic, it's unlikely that they'll present the same material. (If you like, you can announce your topic ahead of time to avoid a collision.) Since it's expected that the participants are themselves learning the topic they'll be presenting, some work will be required to prepare the material. While it would be nice if everyone eventually presented a session, this is not a requirement (i.e. leechers are welcome).

You can use your favourite OOP language for your talk. You should explain your code in language independant manner for the benefit of those who don't know your language. This shouldn't be too difficult: at some level (after you take out the language specific syntax), all OOP looks the same (i.e. there's been only one OOP, just like there's only one way of doing procedural programming). You should be prepared for the audience to stop you if they're lost.

Working code is required, using the simplest possible example (i.e. have your code increment a counter, rather than access a database and construct a webpage). Since the point will be for everyone to learn something, the presentation should be pitched to teaching, rather than just showing that it can be done. The goal of your presentation should be for the audience to be able to reconstruct your code from their head when they get home. I'm happy to post presentations and code to this page.

If there are 8 or less, we can meet in my home (Durham). I don't have a large screen or video projector (I don't have a large wall, even if someone can bring a video projector). We can pass the code around on USB sticks or download it from the house server.

I'm happy to meet anywhere in Durham/RTP that can be arranged (anyone know how to get space in Splatspace?).

Whether we meet once a week or once a month will depend on people's interest. I suggest 1hr at 7pm some weeknight. (I'm available all evenings except wed.)

I can start the ball rolling by giving a talk on the Observer/Observable design pattern and on the model-view-controller design pattern. This should give potential presenters time to work on their material.

I'll start up the group when I get the following

If it goes, can someone (TriLUG?) set up a mailing list for it?