I really must get around to reading Object Thinking. It gets a reasonable review from Darrell Norton among others, and Andy even uses it to support my own metrics!
When it comes to coaching teams in object-oriented design, I’ve always had trouble finding good reading material to give out. Books I’ve tried include:
- Bertrand Meyer’s Object-Oriented Software Construction. Back in the early nineties this was just about all that was available. While it does emphasise the behavioural view of objects, the use of Eiffel doesn’t help, and there’s little help with concepts such as refactoring or the need to eliminate duplication.
- Rebecca Wirfs-Brock’s Designing Object-Oriented Software. I’ve always liked this book, but for some reason British Java programmers never seem comfortable with it. And again, it has little to say about code structure or quality.
- Kent Beck’s Smalltalk Best Practice Patterns. This is my favourite of the three, because the patterns directly apply to refactoring code into great designs. But again, I’ve found that Java programmers seem scared to death of reading smalltalk.
Is Object Thinking what I’ve been looking for? Or is there another book out there that can show talented programmers what great code looks like?
Update, 9 may 05
At last, I’ve found a very good candidate!
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David Anderson
August 7, 2004
Try David Taylor’s “Object Technology: A Manager’s Guide”!
Kevin Rutherford
August 7, 2004
By gum, that’s a blast from the past! Thanks for reminding me about Taylor’s book – I last used it on a project in 1996. It worked extremely well for managers and business analysts, I recall. But it never helped the programmers and designers ‘get’ the style of good object-oriented code, for some reason…
Darrell
August 10, 2004
I don’t know that I gave it a good review. :)
It’s a very situational review. *If* you are interested in history, and don’t mind picking through to find the gems, sure it’s good.
If you want something that is a page-turning insight outlet, you should probably look elsewhere.
Jason Yip
August 11, 2004
How about Rebecca Wirfs-Brock’s new book, Object Design?