Customer Reviews

Reusable Software Components (Prentice Hall Series on Programming Tools and Methodologies)

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This book provides a method of utilizing the advantages of Object-Oriented Programing (OOP) by using C rather than C++. This isn't of much use for people who program PC's where C++ compiliers are abundant. But if there are no C++ compiliers available or the cost is prohibited for the project, this book teaches an excellent way of adding OOP to you code. Like Van Sickle's other book "Programming Microcontrollers in C", the book is well written and easy to read. Concepts are clearly explained and examples are given to clarify the meaning. As an added bonus, you will gain understanding of what C++ compiliers do to your code when compiling objects since some of that work must now be coded by hand.

I'm an experienced OO programmer and an experienced embedded programmer who understands the need to "drop down to" 'C' instead of C++.

The contortions the author goes through to provide OO style inheritance are more appropriate for an academic exercise than real world code. The development cost, maintainance cost, & runtime overhead easily outweighs the benefits. It's ugly. At some point you just have to admit your stuck with 'C' and stop trying to turn a crescent wrench into a socket set.

The technique (which totally writes off data hiding, btw) is laid out in chapter one. The rest of the book consists of classes built with the technique. Since I couldn't buy into Chapter 1's technique, the rest of the book wasn't very useful.

I ordered this book expecting to find some good resources on OO design using C and how to use those methods to write embedded code. What I actually got though was a hardware engineer who was teaching terrible coding practices which I feel should not be followed by anyone. The way the author tried to make the OO design pattern with C code seemed backwards to the simple way I have seen in the past.