Teaching software tools via design patterns

Commercial software tools are increasingly used for teaching computer science courses. Because they are powerful and complex, they are often difficult to learn and to use. It is critical to balance benefits and problems that a software tool may bring about. Visual C++ is used as a tool for developing GUI applications in our “GUI Design” course. We identified examples of several well-known design patterns with Visual C++ and based our lecture on these patterns when teaching the tool. Our experience shows that design patterns help deal with the complex and flatten the learning curve without diverting too much attentions from the course's primary objectives.