S.S. Chern Passed Away...

The well-known mathematician S.S Chern passed away on Dec. 3rd. 2004 in Tianjin, China.

He shaped to a large extent the current state of mathematics research in China and had influenced several generations of Chinese mathematicians, among which I was a member for around 10 years..

An accomplished scholar himself, S.S. Chern established three successful research institutes in China and in U.S in a period of 50 years, and cultivated a great deal of top mathematicians across the globe.

S.S.Chern and C.N Yang represent the best examples of traditional Chinese intellectuals in modern age.

I have been always moved by those examples.

Case Studies in Systems Architecture and Design

In several previous blogs, I advocated a new way to conmunicate architecture and design knowledge in software industry. That is the case study approach, as applied in management training.

I have some spare time at this moment and decide to experiment it myself. The plan is to open a course “case studies in systems design and architecture” in the coming January.

Here are the major topics for the course: (1) some essential technologies that are more effective than others in addressing architectural concerns such as Custom Class Loader, Java Reflection, Byte Code Engineering and AOP, and how they are used to address architectural concerns; (2) design patterns at the code level and systems level, and how they contribute to solve architectural problems. The course will be driven by major architectural concerns and problems, and I will use study cases from open source, from JCP specifications, from JDK and J2EE to analyze the issues and to present the solutions.

For those interested in this course, please pay attention to my further reports on advancement in preparation here at my blog.