Customer Reviews

Pitfalls of Object Oriented Development

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Like so many facets of science, Object-Oriented programming ( OOP) has been overhyped. With so many calling it the silver bullet of program development, it is reassuring that there are voices calling for the triumph of reason. As one who has made the transitions BASIC => FORTRAN => Pascal => C =>C++=> OOP, I am well aware that while OOP is an enormous aid in creating robust software, it does not cure all diseases. Like all tools, if not property used, the cure can be worse than the disease. Webster does an excellent job here in pointing out the locations of many of the land mines inherent in making the transition to OOP.
Leading off with a brief introduction to OOP that can be skipped without consequence, the heart of the book insists of 10 chapters.

1)Conceptual Pitfalls
2)Political Pitfalls
3)Management Pitfalls
4)Analysis and Design Pitfalls
5)Environment, Language and Tool Pitfalls
6)Implementation Pitfalls
7)Class and Object Pitfalls
8)Coding Pitfalls
9)Quality Assurance Pitfalls
10)Reuse Pitfalls

These chapters clearly cover the entire sequence of software development.
Each pitfall is split into several sections.

a)Title and explanation
b)Symptoms
c)Consequences
d)Detection
e)Extraction
f)Prevention

In all cases, the advice is practical, not theoretical. While it may be difficult to implement the advice, it is very hard to argue with it.
One of the most valuable books devoted to OOP, this book should be required reading for everyone in software development using OOP. If all groups planning to use OOP were to make their first task a group study of this book, many projects that would otherwise fail would instead be a success.

Published in Mathematics and Computer Education, reprinted with permission.

Despite its title, not much in this 250-page book is actually about object-oriented technology. If you substituted "client-server" or just "large systems" for "object oriented" most of the content would still apply.

Despite its lack of specific O.O. guidance, the advice Webster gives us is sound. Project managers and others responsible for important software development projects, object-oriented or not, should read and reread it.

The style is friendly and readable. The book ends with a good bibliography of both project-management and object-oriented analysis topics.

We still recommend this book to our clients. Everyone talks about Object-oriented programming as though it were some sort of "silver bullet," but OO programming is still just a tool - it can be used or misused at the risk of your project's success.

I was a little surprised at the sparsity of this book. In general, each set of two pages takes up 1 1/2 pages of actual text. However, the ideas are valuable, and as far as I'm concerned the chapter on political pitfalls by itself justified the purchase price. I would recommend browsing through it in the bookstore first, then making your purchasing decision.

The author presents an easy to follow guide for managers embarking on a development project. Not only does he outline pitfalls, but presents strategies to correct problems before they get out of hand.