Recipient of the 1997 Jolt Award.
The developer of the acclaimed Eiffel programming language comes through with one of the clearest and most informative books about computers ever committed to paper. Object-Oriented Software Construction is the gospel of object-oriented technology and it deserves to be spread everywhere. Meyer opens with coverage of the need for an object-oriented approach to software development, citing improved quality and development speed as key advantages of the approach. He then explains all the key criteria that define an object- oriented approach to a problem. Meyer pays attention to techniques, such as classes, objects, memory management, and more, returning to each technique and polishing his readers' knowledge of it as he explains how to employ it "well." In a section on advanced topics, Meyer explores interesting and relevant topics, such as persistent objects stored in a database. He also offers a sort of "Do and Don't" section in which he enumerates common mistakes and ways to avoid them. Management information isn't the main point of Object-Oriented Software Construction, but you'll find some in its pages. Meyer concludes his tour de force with comparisons of all the key object-oriented languages, including Java. He also covers the potential of simulating object technology in non-object-oriented languages, such as Pascal and Fortran. The companion CD-ROM includes the full text of this book in hypertext form, as well as some tools for designing object-oriented systems. If you program computers, you need to read this book.