Today the most important thing is Coffee! When you take this course (not if *grin*) you definitely need to get coffee after lunch.
Some things of note today:
Group Interaction
There is a lot more group interaction with tasks and the tasks are getting to a point where they take quite a bit lot longer to complete. Group dynamics has definitely picked up and come into play a lot more because by the third day you are much more comfortable with everyone. I am seeing personalities coming out as we get out of the honeymoon stage and that is pretty awesome!
Focus
Another thing is focus. Sometime this afternoon I found myself just tired. I started losing focus. So that is why I mention coffee. Coffee right after lunch will help keep your focus up (unless you don't like coffee, then I suggest jumping jacks!). And if you like espresso, I suggest a little more of that to give you a little extra. :D
Front Controller
Over the last couple of days we have been creating a Front Controller. The concept of a front controller is the architecture behind ASP.NET MVC. Basically, it means that all requests go through one controller that is responsible for hooking those requests up to commands to run (views to display).
Containers
We built a container from scratch. So what is a container? Think something to the effect of Windsor Container or Structure Map. To do that, first we need to understand a container's concerns. So what are a container's concern? Construction, Life cycle and Aspects.
Construction is how it builds objects for you when you ask for them. Life cycle is how those objects live (whether or not they are singletons, transients, singleton per session, etc). Aspects are implemented through dynamic composition (a little more complicated, done through dynamic methods or reflection.emit).
Dynamic composition is basically wrapping an object with the object that implements the interface. Then it intercepts the methods, does something, and then calls the actual methods to do what they are doing. This is known as method interception. Slightly complicated to think about (not sure on implementation yet).
We also went over a whole bunch of concepts and manifestations of those concepts and completed specifications by first check-in from everyone in the class. Oh yeah, and class today was from 9:00 AM - 1:30 AM. Tomorrow it's projected to be at least 1-2 hours longer.