Object-Oriented Software Construction (Book/CD-ROM) (2nd Edition) (Prentice-Hall International Series in Computer Science)

Author : Bertrand Meyer Edition : 2nd Number of Pages : 1296 Publisher : Prentice Hall PTR List Price : $125.99 Amazon Price : $60.97 Used Price : $24.75

Product Description

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.

Customer reviews

Should be titled: "Object Oriented Programming in Eiffel" by .. Clint Pachl (Phoenix, Arizona)
After reading the first couple of hundred pages, I felt something was not right. The notation the author used to explain his OO theories seemed like I was actually being forced to learn a computer language syntax. Before buying, I remember reading through some of the Amazon reviews that mentioned this book was an advertisement for Bertrand Meyer's Eiffel language. So I got online to find some Eiffel syntax and programming examples. Sure enough, Meyer's had me secretly learning his OO language, Eiffel!

The first big clue comes in Chapter 36. Meyer's writes, "the language is the notation that we have devised in part C and applied throughout the book." The Epilogue is the epiphany moment. It's entitled, "Epilogue, In Full Frankness Exposing the Language." In the last paragraph he thanks the reader for "patiently" following along, unveiling that the "anonymous language" used throughout the book is actually Eiffel! He concludes, "welcome to the world of Eiffel." BTW, this is on page 1,163!

I give it 2 stars because 4 of the 36 chapters (~120 pages) are actually worth reading and have very little cruft. These chapters are included in Part B, "The Road To Object Orientation." They cover some very key OO topics, such as modularity, reusability, decomposition, genericity, and abstract data types (ADT). I especially liked the contrast of functional and object-based decomposition in chapter 5. Meyer's argument really gives you a sense of the power of OO languages in application development environments compared to functional or structured languages, such as C or Ada.

However, I bought the book believing it was a language independent study of OO methods. I made this assumption from the title, table of contents, and the book's back cover description. I feel very cheated and would not recommend this book to anybody who is looking for an in-depth read of OO analysis, design or programming. It wastes time introducing the "anonymous" Eiffel syntax, evolution, and implementation when the reader doesn't quite understand the big secret yet.

The better book you can get about OO by .. Phillip C. V. Souza (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)
There's no way someone can get to know about objects without reading meyer's book. It's huge but worth

highly recommended as a first introduction to OOP by .. Todd Ebert (Long Beach California)
When writing a treatise on computer programming one has to strike a balance between providing a book that is both useful (which usually means writing within the context of a compilable programming language), but general enough so as not to oversimplify or truncate parts of the theory because it is not represented by the chosen language. In OOSC2 Meyer does just this, by providing a sound and general introduction to object-oriented programming, while using the Eiffel language for purposes of notation and practical programming examples.

Meyer has a very engaging writing style: very clear, with lots of good (and humorous : ) examples. And the Eiffel language itself seems quite simple, readable (it was obviously influenced by ADA) and brilliantly designed (think of Java, but with multiple inheritance, generics, and without the run-time inefficiency of the java virtual machine).
But whether you program in Eiffel, Java, C#, or C++, OOPSC2 has alot to offer in terms of OO software design, and a good understanding of the issues behind inheritance, polymorphism, the importance of static typing, and dynamic binding.

For example, I program in C++, and this book has helped me clearly understand the object-oriented features of the language, because in clearly explaining the principles, it helped me understand the intentions of the C++ language designers.

May be my only complaint, at perhaps half a star, is the fact that Meyer often weighs in heavily against other languages for their shortcomings, while going easy on his own Eiffel language. For example, he failed to give an objective analysis regarding the run-time costs of garbage collection. Indeed, the chapter on garbage collection seemed more of handwaving defense of the fact that Eiffel uses this technology. A presentation of run-time empirical studies for various applications would have been much more welcomed. However I believe that the benefits of this book far outweigh the occasional partisanship shown towards Eiffel. I truely believe that Meyer favors Eiffel because he believes in it more on the basis of principle than on profit (he does own a software company that supports Eiffel development tools).

very good, but not the holy grail of software engineering by .. xxx yyy (europe)
In this book Bertrand Meyer did an excelllent job in explaining object oriented software design in a rigourous way. Too often authors of OO books were not formal and rigorous enough, leading to a lot of confusion in the OO world. This book gives a very formal and exact treatment of Object orienteation. As a consequence this book is a must read for every OO expert. That the book focusses on eiffel should not be seen as a drawback : you can apply most of the explained techniques in other OO languages.
Also this book does not focus much on UML. However, to my opinion, this is not a drawback neither since the power of UML is strongly overhyped.

Though there are some minor drawbacks in this book :
-the book can be reduced to half of its size without sacrifying rigour and clearity. Some topics are not needed.
-design patterns are missing in this book.
-does not explain enough about unit testing. While the book gives very good explanation on design by contract, design by contract should be seen as an addition to unit testing, but it cannot replace it !!!

Finally some remarks : please do not overestimate the power of software reuse : in reality it has limited usage since in order to create reusable software and reuse it, each teammember has to know quite well what the other teams are doing in order to reuse some part of their work. In reality, for big projects, this is often impractical.
-Design by contract is an important software technique, but you can also use it (apart from some limitations) in Java the assert statement. Of course eiffel is probabaly the best designed programming language. But that does not make it the best choice for building complex applications!! I am convinced that Java , in combination with the techniques describbed in this book, with unit testing frameworks like Junit, with aspect oriented programming facilities, and with usage of design patterns can beat eiffel as a development environment for building mission critical applications.

A must have book for professionals in OO by .. (DF, Brazil)
Unfortunately, the majority of books in computing science area suffers a lack of
precise definition and clarity of terms and concepts. In my personal opinion, the
commercial aspects that strongly affect this area, comparing to other technological
ones, contributes to open the computing book market for authors of highly questionable
experience and a quite shalow knowledge about the matter they're treating. For example, it
is not unusual to see the same author (or group of authors) writing books about Java, .NET,
JSP, ASP, Perl, OO, C/C++ and so on.
Bertrand Meyer's OO book is an exception in this tendency. The subjects treated are logically
distributed and the concepts are clearly and precisely defined. Then, the reader gets an
intuitive and deep understanding of OO theoretical aspects, independent of OO language
specifics. All the concepts are perfectly prioritized and sequenced: software quality before
OO, ADT before classes, features before functions, DBC before exception handling. Every
single concept bases the following ones. I must say, however, that the author should be more
concise: he writes too much to explain a single concept. He reveals his large academic
literate background inserting unnecessary large comments in the text. The book could have
a quite less number of pages without any loss in learning the main concepts.
I sincerely do not see any problem about the relation between the OO concepts presented and
their practical implementation: EIFFEL language. At least, the author shows concretely that
the concepts treated in the book are implementable. If there were not any language to
complete and support the theoretical aspects, we could say : "Ok, all the concepts
in the book are perfect and beautiful, but the closest programming language to
these concepts we can use is JAVA, for example."

Software Construction and Data Structures with Ada 95 (2nd Edition)

Author : Michael B. Feldman Edition : 2 Number of Pages : 648 Publisher : Addison Wesley List Price : $139.40 Amazon Price : $70.00 Used Price : $76.00

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Customer reviews

a good computer book by .. tanping wang (Washington,DC, DC United States)
this book is a pretty good textbook. I bought this book because the author is my advisor of grduate school. After I looked over it, i feel that it's really good book for the first learners of computer science.

Shamans, Software and Spleens : Law and the Construction of the Information Society

Author : James Boyle Number of Pages : 288 Publisher : Harvard University Press List Price : $25.95 Amazon Price : $22.58 Used Price : $8.49

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Now more than ever, information is power, and questions about who owns it, who controls it, and who gets to use it carry powerful implications. These are the questions Boyle explores in matters as diverse as autodialers and direct advertising, electronic bulletin boards and consumer databases, ethno-botany and indigenous pharmaceuticals, the right of publicity (why Johnny Carson owns the phrase "Here's Johnny!"), and the right to privacy (does J. D. Salinger "own" the letters he's sent?). Boyle finds that our ideas about intellectual property rights rest on the notion of the Romantic author--a notion that Boyle maintains is not only outmoded but actually counterproductive, restricting debate, slowing innovation, and widening the gap between rich and poor nations. What emerges from this lively discussion is a compelling argument for relaxing the initial protection of authors' works and expanding the concept of the fair use of information. For those with an interest in the legal, ethical, and economic ramifications of the dissemination of information--in short, for every member of the information society, willing or unwilling--this book makes a case that cannot be ignored.

Customer reviews

Brilliant but virtually unreadable by .. ()
Boyle's ideas are fantastic and his analysis is poignant and timely. Be forewarned, however, that the average sentence length in this book is so long that you will get lost multiple times per page. Add in an average of 0.4 cryptic references to ancient literature per page and a healthy dose of words that will send even Duke law students running for the dictionary and you have a very tough task in front of you.

If you want to learn from Boyle, take his IP class, don't try to read the book. His IP class is fabulous. But beware that he will ask you read this book (I hear even his torts students had to read it) and it will be a terrible experience. You will need to be able to come up with at least one idea from it to toss into your exam answers, as he generally writes at least one question that starts with "Using one or more concepts from Shamans..." The dreadful 27 hour take home exam period is not the time to pick the book up for the first time.

Information Economics meets Legal Realism by .. Ian Murray (Seattle, WA USA)
In a wonderful exposition of contemporary thinking on how markets and institutions produce and distribute information and knowledge, James Boyle gives readers some powerful analysis and some of the conceptual tools they'll need to make the Judge Posner's and Richard Epstein's of the world squirm a bit given their desire to wish away the complex issues Legal Realism raised regarding property and contract law.

Markets, property, privacy, information and knowledge are all social constructs which generate asymmetries of power and Professor Boyle shows the potential for mischief that may occur if workers, citizens, economists and attorneys refuse to rethink what kind of power relations, if any, are consistent with democratic norms.

By looking at such issues as "what is an author" [what is epistemic agency] and the issue of self-ownership of our bodies, Boyle creates a collage of juxtapositions that are of immense relevance to issues such as whether what happened at Enron and other corporations is a manifestation of insider trading, what shall be the scale and scope of patents and copyrights given the need to balance "efficiency" and equity and access, how shall we handle the commodification of our bodies and thoughts?

All of these are tough issues that are never going to go away and Boyle's choice of using Legal Realism as mode of inquiry into how we will shape the future of entitlements to knowledge and it's pecuniary benefits is probably the best choice that can be made for those who see glaring limitations in libertarianism.

The one topic, that in my view is critical for carrying the discussion forward, yet is missing from Boyle's analysis, is employment contracts. The self-ownership thesis as applied to the knowledge in workers heads, as Kenneth Arrow, Michael Perelman, David Ellerman and others have pointed out, raises difficult issues for corporate governance and the rights of workers. Information economics has many unexplored vistas related to labor law; who owns the knowledge of the firm, under what conditions are workers entitled to privacy from their fellow workers - an immense topic given how corporate hierarchies generate huge asymmetries of power at work and the resulting distribution of income. Hopefully Professor Boyle and his colleagues will take up these critical issues in the future.

As for the other reviewers anxieties concerning Karl Marx, their fears are completely unfounded.

Good points lost in poor writing by .. ()
Boyle raises several interesting points regarding information law and he does bring a different way of deciphering the intricacies of copyright and information law. However, many times his arguments are lost in his use of analogies, references, and words which even an attorney can not understand. In other parts of his book, he provides little explanation of the economic theories which have been used by previous scholars to defend the current status of information law. This leaves the reader confused unless the reader is an economist by training. Although I agree with Boyle's view of information law as being bigger than it has previously been defined, I think his archaic style of writing leaves the reader more frustrated than enlightened. I recommend having Black's Law Dictionary and Webster's handy if you are going to read this book.

A brilliant analysis of law, information and the market. by .. ()
I have both just finished Boyle's book and his Torts class at Washington College of Law. Boyle's analysis is strikingly clear. Taking as one of his launching-off points the important California Supreme Court decision in Moore V. Regents of California, Boyle tackles issues ranging from the commodification and distribution of information to the creation of legally protected property interests in biology. He exposes that courts make decisions based not so much on ahistorical, immutable legal principles but on policy considerations often directly related to contemporary trends in economic thinking. Boyle, despite several references to Marx, is a defender of a uniquely American kind of privatized safety regime in the form of the tort system. This has confused careless readers as evidenced by Huber in the pages of the NYT.

excellent, read it. by .. ()
Simply the best book on the problems of the category 'information' as used in the popular terms 'information economy' or 'information society'.

Boyle details both the legal and economic incoherencies of the term in detail. As the reviews above point out there is much fascinating detail about the proceedures of copyright and intellectual property law in action.

It is true that some people won't like this book, and will raise their hands in horror at the mentions of Marx, but this is their loss. The fact that Marx has been used to justify totalitarian states dosn't mean he dosn't have interesting things to say on occasion, and the book is hardly doctrinaire 'marxist'.

There are ethical and analytic problems in our current usage of copyright, which will absolutely cripple any attempts to implement the "information wants to be free" slogan, and there's no reason to think that leaving these problems to the market or the law courts alone will solve them. I know of no other author who has really tried to grip with these problems- so even if you are going to disagree with him, read him. If it doesn't make you think, I don't know what will.

Agile Software Construction

Author : John Hunt Edition : 1 Number of Pages : 254 Publisher : Springer List Price : $84.95 Amazon Price : $8.09 Used Price : $8.09

Product Description

So you think you want to be Agile. But what does it mean? How can you develop software in an agile manner? How can you reap the benefits of agile modelling or Extreme Programming (XP)? What tools might you use to help you become more agile? This book tells you!

Agile software Construction reviews the leading agile development processes. It explains what each is and what they attempt to achieve. It also explains what they are not and dispels numerous myths surrounding agile development.

Agile software construction itself is an attempt to put the software being developed first, and to acknowledge that user requirements change. It is agile because it can respond quickly to the users changing needs. In turn, agile software development puts the software first because almost any activity undertaken must be to the benefit of the software that will be delivered.

This book will help you to determine if an agile approach is for you and which approach (or approaches) to adopt. It guides you in how to plan, organise and develop software systems in an Agile Manner. It introduces the core concepts in a concise and easily digested form, and evaluates how successful the core techniques can be, as well as what problems may be encountered. The book also shows how some of these problems have been overcome on real world projects by combining XP, Agile modelling and Feature Driven Development.

Customer reviews

Very limited look at Agile by .. Kiwi (Mississauga, Ontario Canada)
This book ostensibly focuses on "emerging methods and approaches that are loosely described as Agile and shows how to apply them effectively...." Topics covered include Agile Modeling, Extreme Programming, Feature Driven Development, Agile Methods with RUP and PRINCE2. The author's a Brit (hence the reference to PRINCE2, pretty much unknown outside the UK). There's an overwhelming emphasis on Agile Modeling and XP and, although the books introduction states that it "....brings together a range of the most popular Agile Methods," Scrum, probably the second most popular Agile approach along with XP, receives only around one page and half a dozen cursory references.

While the author emphasizes XP heavily, there is very little attempt to examine the limitations of XP. The coverage of Agile Modeling is pretty lightweight and it's not really a "how to effectiely use Agile" book either. Overall, my assessment is this is pretty lightweight, not especially usefuland there's better books out there that focus on how to introduce and use Agile effectively. There's also better "overview" books out there with a more inclusive coverage of Agile Processes and Approaches for those who want an introduction. And for non-UK reader, the PRINCE2 coverage is pretty much irrelevant.

Not worth your time. Wasn't worth mine either but I'd already spent it so I thought the least I could do is spare others the pain. Sorry John. Better luck with the next one.

too optimistic a view of XP by .. W Boudville (Terra, Sol 3)
The book takes far too favourable a view of Extreme Programming [XP]. It ignores increasing results from industry about the brittleness of XP. You would benefit more by looking up "Extreme Programming Refactored: The Case Against XP" by Stephens and Rosenberg. It goes into gory details about actual XP attempts, including the famous initial one at Chrysler.

Which is not to say that Hunt's book is entirely wrong. Parts of it, like the need for unit testing, are not bad at all. It should be adopted in many projects. And the waterfall approach does have severe problems. But you can buy into agile programming without necessarily going to the extreme of XP.

Remote control: heard about the latest wonder tool that has the construction world buzzing? With construction management software, district administrators ... An article from: District Administration

Format : HTML Author : Julie Sturgeon Number of Pages : 9 Release Date : 2005-07-25 Publisher : Professional Media Group LLC List Price : $5.95 Amazon Price : $5.95

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