Design Discussion Lab

Due Friday at the beginning of class

Objectives

• To analyze software design decisions

Motivation: Throughout this class, we'll talk a lot about design decisions. You and/or your professors have been making design decisions for awhile.

Design Discussion

Let's consider some design decisions from the provided code. For each of the following questions, first confirm my first intro/set up statement. Then, in a document, answer the questions:

• turn is an instance variable of the Game class. Is it better design for turn to be a local, instance, or class variable? Justify your answer.
• user_input is a local variable in the getInput method of the ConnectFour class. Is it better design for user_input to be a local, instance, or class variable? Justify your answer.
• RANKS is a class variable of the Card class. Is it better design for RANKS to be a local, instance, or class variable? Justify your answer.
• tokens is an instance variable of the ConnectFour class. Is it better design for tokens to be a local, instance, or class variable? Justify your answer.
• Player is a class in war.py. Is it better design for the Player class to be defined in war.py or in game.py? Justify your answer.
• War's step method takes as a parameter dummyInput. What purpose does it serve?

Synthesis: What questions should you ask to determine if a variable should be a local, instance, or class variable? Answer in your document.

Submitting your assignment

Show Professor Sprenkle your assignment during the beginning of class on Friday.

Grading (10 pts)

You will be graded on making a good-faith effort in answering the design questions.