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From: beard@ux1.lbl.gov (Patrick C Beard)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++,comp.lang.smalltalk
Subject: Re: new OO books
Keywords: books
Message-ID: <4206@helios.ee.lbl.gov>
Date: 11 Nov 89 04:36:03 GMT
References: <271@zeek.UUCP>
Sender: usenet@helios.ee.lbl.gov
Reply-To: beard@ux1.lbl.gov (Patrick C Beard)
Organization: Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, Berkeley
Lines: 42

In article <271@zeek.UUCP> rick@zeek.UUCP (Rick Wilhelm) writes:
#I just received the mailing for a CS book club that I belong to,
#and two new OO books are among the featured selections this month.
#
#_Object-Oriented Environment in C++_ David Hu, Oct 89 MIS Press
#_Object-Oriented Analysis_ Peter Coad and Ed Yourdon, Oct 89 Prentice Hall
# 
#The flyer says that:
#"David Hu is a programmer with Baldur Systems Corp., and the
#author of _C/C++ for Expert Systems_"
#
..
#Has anyone read these books and have an opinion on them?

I purchased "Object-Oriented Environment in C++" by David Hu, and
promptly returned it.  The title of the book should have warned me.  The
book reads just like the title, awkwardly.

The book attempts to compare SmallTalk, Objective-C, and C++ in an unbiased
fashion, but clearly shows the author's bias towards C++ (not that I don't
have a bias that way #:>).  There are numerous typo's, they just jump out
at you, even in the index.  The examples in C++ are full of mistakes, I can't
say how accurate the examples in SmallTalk and Objective-C are, but I would
expect that they are in error as well.  The book then goes on to try to explain
using object oriented techniques to build a windowing system, using Zortech
C++.  The code was full of DOS specific bios calls and was (IMHO) basically
useless as a teaching example.  He spent more time explaining the details
of the code than talking about the rationales for the design (or lack of) used.

Anyway, I just skimmed the book and that was what I found.  I am sure that
on a closer reading that I would've become absolutely infuriated with the
book.  Thank goodness my local bookstore gave me a refund.  I can't believe
the publisher would allow an author to get away with so many errors.  I find
much more concise and useful information by reading comp.lang.c++.

A question to you all, are there any GOOD books on doing object oriented
programming?  I have yet to see the book by Lippman, and am hoping it will
give me some help.
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-  Patrick Beard, Macintosh Programmer                        (beard@lbl.gov) -
-  Berkeley Systems, Inc.  ".......<dead air>.......Good day!" - Paul Harvey  -
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