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From: wlp@calmasd.Prime.COM (Walter Peterson)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
Subject: OO Design books
Keywords: OOP, OOD, books
Message-ID: <583@calmasd.Prime.COM>
Date: 13 Sep 89 06:38:27 GMT
Organization: Prime - San Diego R&D (Object and Data Management Group)
Lines: 66


I have received a number of e-mail messages regarding my posting about
object-oriented design (OOD) books and several of them have asked the
same question so I'm clarifying it here for one and all.

In the posting I stated that I have not seen any good object-oriented
design books.  Several people have asked me if I meant this or that
specific book.  Let me say that I was being quite specific about
Object-Oriented *DESIGN* books. There are several excellent books
that, while they do address OOD, are primarily about a sepcific
language and the techniques and principles of OOD as they apply to
those languages.  Bertrand Meyer's "Object Oriented Software
Construction" is one such.  This is a very good, very well written
book and on the whole I would recommend it.  Another very good, albeit
somewhat dated (1986) book is Brad Cox's "Object-Oriented Programming: An
Evolutionary Approach."  Both these and certain others ( the set of
books on Smalltalk-80 by Goldberg, et. al. ) are all very good.

However, they all approach object-oriented design from the viewpoint
of the particular language which they are presenting.  This is not in
and of itself a bad thing, but it does color their presentation of the
object paradigm and the principles of object-oriented design.  Cox for
example, devotes only a few paragraphs to multiple inheritance, since
at the time of that writing ( and today ? ) Objective-C did not
support multiple inheritance.  He is quite up-front about that and in
that context I have no problem with the omission of multiple
inheritance.  If he had been caliming to be writing about the general,
overall object paradigm and general object-oriented design
methodology, I *would* have had problems with it.

I am still looking for two things: 1. a good, general, overall
introduction to the object paradigm and object-oriented design
methodologies that is not tied to a single language and 2. any good,
ACCURATE, READABLE introduction to C++.

The need for an instance of item 2. is almost self-evident if one has
been following the discussions here of the various C++ books currently
available. I won't belabor it any further in this posting.

My concern for an instance of item 1 may not be so obvious, however.
OOP is still trying to define itself. There are a number of good OO
languages available, a number of so-so languages and a few not-so-hot
languages.  No two take exactly the same approach to OOP.  Some use
inheritance, others deligation ( some say deligation is inheritance;
I'm not going to get into *that* debate here ! ) some have multiple
inheritance, others don't. Of that ones that do have MI almost no two
do it in the same manner. Some have dynamic class hierarchies and do
more at run-time than the ones that do not. The list of differences
goes on and on.  Some of these differences don't impact on design
decisions, but others can have a significant impact on the design.

In previous postings I have taken some people to task for the object
models that they have presented on the net and I believe that the main
reason for these poor models has been a lack of understanding of the
general principles of OOD and excessive concentration on the mechanics
of a particular language.

I'd better cut this off at this point or I'll run on for too long.

Input is welcome and actively solicited.

---------------------

-- 
Walt Peterson.  Prime - San Diego R&D (Object and Data Management Group)
"The opinions expressed here are my own."