From object technology pioneer and ETH Zurich professor Bertrand Meyer, winner of the Jolt award and the ACM Software System Award, a revolutionary textbook that makes learning programming fun and rewarding. Meyer builds his presentation on a rich object-oriented software system supporting graphics and multimedia, which students can use to produce impressive applications from day one, then understand inside out as they learn new programming techniques. Unique to Touch of Class is a combination of a practical, hands-on approach to programming with the introduction of sound theoretical support focused on helping students learn the construction of high quality software. The use of full color brings exciting programming concepts to life. Among the useful features of the book is the use of Design by Contract, critical to software quality and providing a gentle introduction to formal methods. Will give students a major advantage by teaching professional-level techniques in a literate, relaxed and humorous way.
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From the reviews: “This book ‘is not just about learning to program but about ’Learning to program Well.’’ Meyer’s latest text conveys his impressive experience in the field of computer science, going well beyond just software engineering. … the target audience includes both students and teachers. …The large quantity of information provided is well organized. … Colors are plentiful and character fonts play an important role. …Coming from a father of object orientation and software quality, it is not surprising that this is an excellent book.” (Alexandre Bergel, ACM Computing Reviews, January, 2010) “The best thing about this book, and it is a very good thing indeed, is that it is thorough. … The material is well-written and thorough – it includes introductory material aimed at the student, then at the instructor. … this is an excellent book. If I were put in the position of needing to teach an elementary programming course … this would be high on my list of candidate textbooks.” (Robert L. Glass, The Software Practitioner, January-February, 2010) “This nicely written and enjoyable textbook is used for the ‘Introduction to programming’ course taught at ETH (Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich) to all entering computing science students. … In addition to the excellent book, Meyer provides an outstanding web site (http://touch.ethz.ch/) with a huge amount of material including course slides, video recording of lectures, slides for exercise sessions, a lot of information for instructors, software downloads, and, of course, blogs and wikis.” (Haim Kilov, Zentralblatt MATH, Vol. 1188, 2010)
From the Back Cover
From object technology pioneer, Design by Contract inventor and ETH Zurich professor Bertrand Meyer, winner of ACM Software System Award, the Dahl-Nygaard prize and the Jolt award, Touch of Class is a revolutionary introductory programming textbook that makes learning programming fun and rewarding. Instead of the traditional low-level examples, Meyer builds his presentation on a rich object-oriented software system supporting graphics and multimedia, which students can use to produce impressive applications from day one, then explore "from the outside in" as they learn new programming techniques. Unique to Touch of Class is the combination of a practical, hands-on approach with sound theory. Throughout the presentation of software concepts, the book relies on the principles of Design by Contract, critical to software quality and providing a gentle introduction to formal methods. The coverage is notable in both its depth and its breadth. In addition to core programming concepts such as control structures, algorithms and fundamental data structures, it encompasses recursion (including theory and implementation), reference and pointer manipulation, inheritance and associated techniques of polymorphism and dynamic binding, topological sort as an example of algorithm and API design, syntax description techniques, important design patterns such as Observer and Visitor, event-driven programming, high-level function closures (including an introduction to lambda calculus) and software tools. The final chapter is a detailed introduction to the challenges and techniques of software engineering, from lifecycle models to requirements analysis. The use of full color brings exciting programming concepts to life. Touch of Class gives students the leading edge by teaching both the fundamental techniques of programming and the professional-level skills preparing them for the challenges of modern software engineering.
Bertrand Meyer is Chief Architect of Eiffel Software (based in California, http://eiffel.com) and Professor of Software Engineering at ETH Zurich, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology.
He is the initial designer of the Eiffel method and language and has continued to participate in its evolution. He also directed the development of the EiffelStudio environment, compiler, tools and libraries through their successive versions.
His latest book, Touch of Class: Learning to Program Well, Using Object Technology and Contracts, is based on several years of teaching introductory programming at ETH and is scheduled for publication on August 9, published by Springer Verlag (see Amazon page and Springer page).
Earlier books include "Object-Oriented Software Construction" (a general presentation of object technology, winner of the 1998 Jolt Award); "Eiffel: The Language" (description of the Eiffel language); "Object Success" (a discussion of object technology for managers); "Reusable Software" (a discussion of reuse issues and solutions); "Introduction to the Theory of Programming Languages". He has also authored numerous articles (see publication list) and edited or co-edited several dozen conference proceedings, including the 2005 "Verified Software".
Other activities include: chair of the TOOLS conference series (running since 1989, hosted at ETH since 2007, next year session in Malaga, Spain); director of the LASER summer school on software engineering (taking place every year since 2003 in early September in Elba island, Italy); member, and chair since 2009, of the IFIP TC2 committee (Software technology); member of the IFIP Working Group 2.3 on Programming Methodology; member of the French Academy of Technologies. He is also active as a consultant (object-oriented system design, architectural reviews, technology assessment), trainer in object technology and other software topics, and conference speaker. Awards include ACM Software System Award, Fellow of the ACM, Dahl-Nygaard Prize, and honorary doctorate from the Technical University (ITMO) of Saint Petersburg.
Prior to founding Eiffel Software in 1985, Meyer had a 9-year technical and managerial career at EDF, and was for three years on the faculty at the University of California. His experience with object technology through the Simula language, as well as early work on abstract data types and formal specification (including participation in the first versions of the Z specification language) provided some of the background for the development of Eiffel.
At ETH Zurich he pursues research on the construction of high-quality software (see Web site of the Chair of Software Engineering at http://se.ethz.ch).
If you want to learn how to program and how to solve problems of arbitrary scale and complexity using the computer, you must learn the material in this book (as well as in Bertrand Meyer's Object-Oriented Software Development book.) If you want to waste your time and learn the baloney needed to get and keep a job in today's crumby software development marketplace, go elsewhere.
From the man who invented eiffel. An excellent introduction to software development the right way. Examples and the software development environment is available as a free download. The approach used in this book is useful for the beginner as well as an experienced programmer. Software runs on Linux, Mac OS x, and Windows.
