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Object-Oriented Software Construction (2ed) by Bertrand Meyer Recommended

ISBN: 0 13 629155 4       Publisher: Prentice Hall       Pages: 1254pp&CD       Price: £??

Categories:   object oriented     eiffel

Reviewed by Francis Glassborow in C Vu 9-5 (Jul 1997)

Is software design and development important to you? If the answer to this question is yes you will need to find the time to read this massive work. Unlike many 1000+ page tomes every page of this one matters and is worthy of study. I think that Bertrand Meyer has matured to the level that he does not expect you to agree with everything he writes but have you matured to the stage where you can at least read what he has written and think about it seriously? I hope so.

This book is one of the corner stones of Object Oriented development from analysis through to delivery. What makes this version particularly useful is that it comes with a time-limited Eiffel development environment for Windows 95/NT. I am a little sad that the time limit is 30 days because that is pretty restrictive for anyone trying to study this subject while being in full-time employment. However it is certainly better than nothing. Ultimately abiding by such limitations is a matter of ethics. Personally as long as you were still using it for the purpose for which it was intended (to allow you to study the material in the book) I would not consider circum- venting the limitation as unethical (of course that is an ethical/moral call rather than a legal one). If you do not use one of the two supported platforms have no fear because similar resources maybe provided for other leading platforms on application to ISE.

I am not going to say much more about this book because I doubt that much that I could write will change your intention to either read or skip it. I think if you are serious about OO software development you will read this book. On the other hand if you were serious about the subject you would not be using Visual C++ except under extreme duress. There is much more to OO than just a language and a coding style. When you have finished working through this book you will be better qualified to agree or disagree with other people's assessments of whether particular work environments are or are not supportive of OO.

Getting full value from this book will be hard work (not because it is hard to read but because you will need to digest what you read) but it will be worth the effort.