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Book Review: Interface-Oriented Design by Ken Pugh

This was my second time through this book and overall I have to say that I enjoyed it.  Including the appendix, the book is just over 200 pages.  This makes it one of the shorter books I have on software design.  It's also one of the most readable.  Don't let its readability and shortness mislead you, however.  It addresses a topic which is both powerful and often overlooked, the power that interfaces have on application design.  If you are in the habit of practicing test-driven development, you have a good idea of what I'm referring to.

The content of the book does a good job covering the subject matter.  He compares and contrasts interface-based composition with inheritance, stateful vs stateless interfaces, translation between stateful and stateless interfaces, and a whole host of other relevant topics.  Some of the more interesting points in the book were: interfaces as object roles, fluent interfaces, procedural vs document-based interfaces, and a small introduction to some of the commonly used GoF patterns.  The topics on document-based interfaces were particularly relevant to my current project and his ability to sneak some SOA material in the appendix (and one of the examples) was also welcome.

If I had to classify this book, I would say that it's a light read if you are familiar with the basics.  It will be a bit tougher otherwise.  It isn't terribly in-depth, but it does bring to light a number of topics (ie.. breadth over depth).  If you need a breather from that pile of textbooks on your desk, this would be a good choice.

posted on Friday, July 20, 2007 12:55 AM Print