Design Pattern Meetings
In February, we started something new. Each month we are going to have a meeting dedicated to a design pattern. We started with the Strategy Pattern.
The Strategy Pattern defines a family of algorithms, encapsulates each one, and makes them interchangeable. Strategy lets the algorithm vary independently from clients that use it. (Head First Design Patterns)
We discussed a scenario in which this pattern would be useful, and then talked about how to implement it. One very good example came up for using the Strategy Pattern in science. Often one wants to do statistics, and to do statistics one often needs distributions. But you don't always use the same distributions with the same analysis, so it is useful to have the distributions not be part of your statistical tools, but rather as a separate interface (usually a class).
In March, we will be discussing the Observer Pattern. Meeting will be Friday, March 13th, at 4pm. We are going to continue to have an additional meeting most months, which will be either one of our own speaking about their coding and research or someone we bring in to discuss a particular topic. Our next meeting is February 25th, and we will be hearing some more from Genome Sciences. Please join our mailing list to get details.