Chong-wei Xu

The SE 2004 of the ACM/IEEE computing curriculum project recommends software design and architecture as one of its ten essential areas of study. Software Architecture and Design Illuminated is the ideal text for undergraduate and graduate students delving into this critical area of the software development process. This text offers a coherent and integrated approach to the discipline of software architectural design and covers a complete set of important methodologies, architectural styles, design guidelines, and design tools. Java is used throughout the book to explain design principles and present case studies. Review questions, exercises, and design assignments round out most chapters and allow students to test themselves on key material.

This innovative approach to teaching Java language and programming uses game design development as the method to applying concepts.Instead of teaching game design using Java, projects are designed to teach Java in a problem-solving approach that is both a fun and effective. Learning Java with Games introduces the concepts of Java and coding; then uses a project to emphasize those ideas. It does not treat the object-oriented and procedure and loop parts of Java as two separate entities to be covered separately, but interweaves the two concepts so the students get a better picture of what Java is. After studying a rich set of projects, the book turns to build up a “Three-layer Structure for Games” as an architecture template and a guiding line for designing and developing video games. The proposed three-layer architecture not only merges essential Java object-oriented features but also addresses loosely coupled software architecture.