bob@pdn.UUCP (Bob Hickle) (05/26/88)
I have recently received a flyer from Prentice Hall advertising
the following two books on object oriented design. Has anyone
out there read these books? If so, how about posting a brief
book review. Opinions welcome. Are these books worth the price?
The books:
Object-oriented Software Construction by Bertrand Meyer.
[Date unknown], 534 pages, cloth book.
Price on the flyer is $31.45 (a 15% discount).
[ This book appears to present o-o concepts and design
using the Eiffel programming language for its examples.
It is a long book. Is quantity = quality here? Is
this just an advertisement for Eiffel? ]
Object-oriented Systems Analysis: Modeling The World In Data
by Sally Shlaer and Stephen Mellor.
April 1988, 160 pages, paper book.
Price on the flyer is $19.55 (a 15 % discount).
[ Sounds like an attempt to describe how to model the
real world in terms of an information model, which
is then represented as a set of data relationships. ]
Any info on these books would be appreciated.
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Bob Hickle Paradyne Corporation
uunet!pdn!bob Mail stop LF-207
gatech!uflorida!usfvax2!pdn!bob 8550 Ulmerton Road, PO Box 2826
Phone: (813) 530-2664 Largo, FL 34641day@grand.UUCP (Dave Yost) (05/28/88)
In article <3274@pdn.UUCP> bob@pdn.UUCP (Bob Hickle) writes: >Has anyone out there read these books? If so, how about posting >a brief book review. > >[one of] The books: > >Object-oriented Software Construction by Bertrand Meyer. >May, 1988, 534 pages, cloth book. >Price on the flyer from Prentice-Hall is >$31.45 (a 15% discount). > > [ This book appears to present o-o concepts and design > using the Eiffel programming language for its examples. > It is a long book. Is quantity = quality here? Is > this just an advertisement for Eiffel? ] So far, I've read the first 9 chapters, and have peeked at some later chapters. This is a very well-written, readable book, loaded with historical references. The author's presentation of his point of view is well- motivated and well-organized, and he nearly always presents and refutes interesting objections to his line of reasoning. The book starts with an astute survey of existing software design practices and problems, and lays out a set of desirable goals. He then proceeds to present his version of the principles of OO design and shows how they meet many of those goals. To illustrate and advance the discussion, he presents his Eiffel language and uses it for the examples. The book could not have been written any other way because there is no other existing language that could demonstrate his view of how software should be constructed. If this makes the book an advertisement for Eiffel, then it is advertisement at the very loftiest, most educational level. One of the main thrusts of the book and of the Eiffel language is the goal of producing error-free software. The language provides for a very interesting integration of classes and assertions. The assertions serve not only to generate optional runtime checking code, but as self-documentation of the semantics of classes and their functions and procedures, and they mesh with inheritance in a very elegant way. One message of the book comes through loud and clear: if you want to write error-free software, you want as much help from the language as possible; the more the language enforces sanity the better. This leads to the obvious (unstated) conclusion that C (or pascal or whatever) extended with optional higher-level features (such as classes) is not as powerful a tool for the job as a well-designed purely higher-level language. (Is it a wonder that C wasn't implemented as extensions to assembler language? I guess that was back when they didn't care if anyone else ever used it.) One amazing tidbit about the book is that the author is French (though he's been mostly stateside since '83), yet his writing in English is superb. I guess he's good at languages (he also has a Master's degree in the Russian language.) He has an M.S. from Stanford and a Ph.D. from the University of Nancy in France. My perspective: I have programmed in C for nine years, and as time goes by I have become increasingly impatient with the grunge level of C. My quest for a higher level language has led me to Icon, C++, and Eiffel, which I hope to try soon. --dave yost
day@grand.UUCP (Dave Yost) (05/29/88)
In article <412@grand.UUCP> day@grand.UUCP (I) Yost) wrote: >So far, I've read the first 9 chapters, and have peeked >at some later chapters. This is a very well-written, >readable book, loaded with historical references. The >author's presentation of his point of view is well- >motivated and well-organized, and he nearly always >presents and refutes interesting objections to his line >of reasoning. The book starts with an astute survey >of existing software design practices and problems, and >lays out a set of desirable goals. He then proceeds to >present his version of the principles of OO design and >shows how they meet many of those goals. > [etc.] I forgot to tell you where I know for sure that you can get a copy of this book that doesn't seem to be in stores yet. The book is Object-oriented Software Construction by Bertrand Meyer Prentice Hall International Series in Computer Science ISBN 0-13-629049-3 hardcover ISBN 0-13-629031-0 paperback (apparently won't be available in the US) His company will ship it to you if you charge it to your MC-VISA number or pay for it C.O.D. It's $36.00. Interactive Software Engineering 805-685-1006 270 Storke Road, Suite 7 Goleta, CA 93117 --dave yost
robert@pvab.UUCP (Robert Claeson) (05/31/88)
In article <412@grand.UUCP>, day@grand.UUCP (Dave Yost) writes: > One of the main thrusts of the book and of the Eiffel > language is the goal of producing error-free software. > My quest for a higher level language has > led me to Icon, C++, and Eiffel, which I hope to try > soon. Can I buy Eiffel? From who? Or are there other, alternative implementations?
day@grand.UUCP (Dave Yost) (06/02/88)
In article <239@pvab.UUCP> robert@pvab.UUCP (Robert Claeson) writes: > >Can I buy Eiffel? From whom? Or are there other implementations? Bertrand Meyer's company sells an Eiffel compiler with class library and a bunch of tools. Interactive Software Engineering 805-685-1006 270 Storke Road, Suite 7 Goleta, CA 93117 The class library is especially useful because it has a lot of container classes in it, like tree, array, linked list, two-way linked list, stack, etc. Eiffel has genericity, aka parameterized types, so you can put anything you want in those containers. For example, pnt: TREE[POINT], poly: LINKED_LIST[POLYGON] uses only one one copy of the LINKED_LIST container code, even though LINKED_LIST is inherited by the TREE class. Three of these tools are really interesting: flat translate a class definition into one in which all the inherited features are merged into the class itself so the reader doesn't have to poke around in the inheritance structure to see what's what. short translate a class definition into a short form to serve as the documentation on the class interface. A -t flag makes troff output. es build a program from a specified collection of classes with various compile-time options. Class definitions have a 1-to-1 correspondence with files. There are no header files to keep in sync, and there is no separate list of dependencies (as in Makefiles) to keep in sync (you don't use make, except perhaps at some outer level). The class definition file itself serves as the sole repository for information about a class. The program building tool, es, understands enough about Eiffel to determine class dependencies, and recompiles classes as necessary if you change something. For instance, if there is no change to the exported interface in class A, then client class B will not be recompiled, and if only some code inside a routine of class A is changed, neither B nor heir class C will be recompiled. The compiler generates C, the portable low-level language of our day. I haven't tried this stuff yet, I've just seen a demo and read about it. --dave