This lecture is an introduction to object oriented programming and more specifically to the Java and C++ programming languages. It is targeted to students with a limited background in object oriented languages and programming in general. It aims at reaching a common base level of knowledge, that is assumed as a prerequisite by most of the other lectures given at the school.

Refactoring is the process of modifying the code so that the external behavior is not altered, while the internal structure is improved.  In this lecture, some examples of code refactoring will be presented with reference to the object oriented programming paradigm. They will be introduced on a small program, used throughout the lecture.

Coding conventions play a major role in software quality assurance. They enforce a disciplined use of the constructs available in the programming language of choice and they help producing a readable, standardized code. In this lecture examples of coding conventions adopted by some of the experiments at CERN will be given. The tool RuleChecker, for their automatic verification, will be described, with examples of implemented checks.

A set of increasingly difficult coding conventions will be implemented in RuleChecker, a tool developed by ITC-irst and currently adopted by several experiments and groups at CERN. The students will have the opportunity to get familiar with the code analyzer exploited by RuleChecker and the related language model, as well as with the usage of RuleChecker for the automatic verification of some coding conventions.