The author presents his interpretation of OO which he claims stems from a couple of books (8) listed in the bibliography. He did not do his history lessons, however: throughout the book he criticizes Java, C++ and other OO languages wishing for a pure OO language where, for example, even “if” statement would be an object. Not knowing that such language already exists – Smalltalk – he started working on his own pure OO language. In other words, the author is talking about “true” OO programming without ever having programmed in a true OO language.
The author claims that his interpretation of OO makes programs more maintainable and performant, but does not realize that he is reiterating the tension between eager and lazy evaluation. Without realizing it, he is proponent of the latter, and Is unaware that precisely lazy evaluation “by default” is a source of performance problems and excessive memory usage in Haskell, and a big stumbling block for newcomers. It is problematic to the extent that people are experimenting with Haskell dialects where eager evaluation would be the default. Even Simon Peyton Jones has said that “the next Haskell will be strict”.
Even though the book contains a few sound advices (the chapter on testing, “fail fast” philosophy), the overall tone of the book is condescending and gives an impression that the author thinks very high of himself because reading a couple of books on OO lead him to some kind of “revelation”.
Conclusion: these books are way too expensive and basically a waste of money. I’m sorry I bought them. I’ll write a longer, more thorough review on my webpage. After that, I'll give away my copies for free.
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