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Book Review: Designing Object-Oriented Software

Considering this book was published more than 17 years ago, I'd say that the fact that it is still relevant today is an amazing tribute to both object-orientation as a programming paradigm and the concept of responsibility-driven design (which was introduced in this book).  Overall, however, I might suggest a .NET developer start with another book on object-oriented analysis and design.  This particular book tends to focus heavily on multiple inheritance, which is currently not available to those of us working in a managed world.  It does, however, give us a very good look at building an object-oriented application.  It introduces the concepts of classes, responsibilities, collaborations, subsystems, and object hierarchies quite well.  Some of the examples tend to be a bit exhaustive on detail (printing the actual CRC cards of the design), but I think this would be useful for a budding OO designer.  In short, this book is a classic, and it belongs on the shelf of every thoughtful designer.  I will be reading Rebecca Wirfs-Brock's newer book shortly, so I will let you know how they compare.

posted on Wednesday, July 25, 2007 9:29 PM Print