Product Description

Written by a software developer for software developers, this book is a unique collection of the latest software development methods. The author includes OOD, UML, Design Patterns, Agile and XP methods with a detailed description of a complete software design for reusable programs in C++ and Java. Using a practical, problem-solving approach, it shows how to develop an object-oriented application--from the early stages of analysis, through the low-level design and into the implementation. Walks readers through the designer's thoughts -- showing the errors, blind alleys, and creative insights that occur throughout the software design process. The book covers: Statics and Dynamics; Principles of Class Design; Complexity Management; Principles of Package Design; Analysis and Design; Patterns and Paradigm Crossings. Explains the principles of OOD, one by one, and then demonstrates them with numerous examples, completely worked-through designs, and case studies. Covers traps, pitfalls, and work arounds in the application of C++ and OOD and then shows how Agile methods can be used. Discusses the methods for designing and developing big software in detail.Features a three-chapter, in-depth, single case study of a building security system. For Software Engineers, Programmers, and Analysts who want to understand how to design object oriented software with state of the art methods.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #203977 in Books
• Published on: 2002-10-25
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 529 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780135974445
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From the Back Cover

Best selling author and world-renowned software development expert Robert C. Martin shows how to solve the most challenging problems facing software developers, project managers, and software project leaders today.

This comprehensive, pragmatic tutorial on Agile Development and eXtreme programming, written by one of the founding father of Agile Development:

• Teaches software developers and project managers how to get projects done on time, and on budget using the power of Agile Development.
• Uses real-world case studies to show how to of plan, test, refactor, and pair program using eXtreme programming.
• Contains a wealth of reusable C++ and Java code.
• Focuses on solving customer oriented systems problems using UML and Design Patterns.

Robert C. Martin is President of Object Mentor Inc. Martin and his team of software consultants use Object-Oriented Design, Patterns, UML, Agile Methodologies, and eXtreme Programming with worldwide clients. He is the author of the best-selling book Designing Object-Oriented C++ Applications Using the Booch Method (Prentice Hall, 1995), Chief Editor of, Pattern Languages of Program Design 3 (Addison Wesley, 1997), Editor of, More C++ Gems (Cambridge, 1999), and co-author of XP in Practice, with James Newkirk (Addison-Wesley, 2001). He was Editor in Chief of the C++ Report from 1996 to 1999. He is a featured speaker at international conferences and trade shows.

About the Author

ROBERT C. MARTIN is President of Object Mentor Inc. Martin and his team of software consultants use Object-Oriented Design, Patterns, UML, Agile Methodologies, and eXtreme Programming with worldwide clients. He is the author of the best-selling book Designing Object-Oriented C++ Applications Using the Booch Method (Prentice Hall, 1995), Chief Editor of, Pattern Languages of Program Design 3 (Addison Wesley, 1997), Editor of, More C++ Gems (Cambridge, 1999), and co-author of XP in Practice, with James Newkirk (Addison-Wesley, 2001). He was Editor in Chief of the C++ Report from 1996 to 1999. He is a featured speaker at international conferences and trade shows.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Agile development is the ability to develop software quickly, in the face of rapidly changing requirements. In order to achieve this agility, we need to employ practices that provide the necessary discipline and feedback. We need to employ design principles that keep our software flexible and maintainable, and we need to know the design patterns that have been shown to balance those principles for specific problems. This book is an attempt to knit all three of these concepts together into a functioning whole.

This book describes those principles, patterns, and practices and then demonstrates, how they are applied by walking through dozens of different case studies. More importantly, the case studies are not presented as complete works. Rather, they are designs in progress. You will see the designers make mistakes, and you will observe how they identify the mistakes and eventually correct them. You will see them puzzle over conundrums and worry over ambiguities and trade-offs. You will see the act of design.

The Devil Is in the Details

This book contains a lot of Java and C++ code. I hope you will carefully read that code since, to a large degree, the code is the point of the book. The code is the actualization of what this book 6~ '' has to say.

There is a repeating pattern to this book. It consists of a series of case studies of varying sizes. Some are very small, and some require several chapters to describe. Each case study is preceded by /material that is meant to prepare you for it. For example, the Payroll case study is preceded by chapters describing the object-oriented design principles and patterns used in the case study.

The book begins with a discussion of development practices and processes. That discussion is punctuated by a number of small case studies and examples. From there, the book moves on to the topic of design and design principles, and then to some design patterns, more design principles that govern packages, and more patterns. All of these topics are accompanied by case studies.

So prepare yourself to read some code and to pore over some UML diagrams. The book you are about to read is very technical, and its lessons, like the devil, are in the details.

A Little History

Over six years ago, I wrote a book entitled Designing Object-Oriented C++ Applications using the Booch Method. It was something of magnum opus for me, and I was very pleased with the result and with the sales.

This book started out as a second edition to Designing, but that's not how it turned out. Very little remains of the original book in these pages. Little more than three chapters have been carried through, and those chapters have been massively changed. The intent, spirit, and many of the lessons of the book are the same. And yet, I've learned a tremendous amount about software design and development in the six years since Designing came out. This book reflects that learning.

What a half-decade! Designing came out just before the Internet collided with the planet. Since then, the number of abbreviations we have to deal with has doubled. We have Design Patterns, Java, EJB, RMI, J2EE, XML, XSLT, HTML, ASP, JSP, Servlets, Application Servers, ZOPE, SOAP, C#, .NET, etc., etc. Let me tell you, it's been hard to keep the chapters of this book reasonably current!

The Booch Connection

In 1997, I was approached by Grady Booch to help write the third edition of his amazingly successful Object-Oriented Analysis and Design with Applications. I had worked with Grady before on some projects, and I had been an avid reader and contributor to his various works, including UML. So I accepted with glee. I asked my good friend Jim Newkirk to help out with the project.

Over the next two years, Jim and I wrote a number of chapters for the Booch book. Of course, that effort meant that I could not put as much effort into this book as I would have liked, but I felt that the Booch book was worth the contribution. Besides, this book was really just a second edition of Designing at the time, and my heart wasn't in it. If I was going to say something, I wanted to say something new and different.

Unfortunately, that version of the Booch book was not to be. It is hard to find the time to write a book during normal times. During the heady days of the ".com" bubble, it was nearly impossible. Grady got ever busier with Rational and with new ventures like Catapulse. So the project stalled. Eventually, I asked Grady and Addison Wesley if I could have the chapters that Jim and I wrote to include in this book. They graciously agreed. So several of the case study and UML chapters came from that source.

The Impact of Extreme Programming

In late 1998, XP reared its head and challenged our cherished beliefs about software development. Should we create lots of UML diagrams prior to writing any code, or should we eschew any kind of diagrams and just write lots of code? Should we write lots of narrative documents that describe our design, or should we try to make the code narrative and expressive so that ancillary documents aren't necessary? Should we program in pairs? Should we write tests before we write production code? What should we do?

This revolution came at an opportune time for me. During the middle to late 90s, Object Mentor was helping quite a few companies with object-oriented (OO) design and project management issues. We were helping companies get their projects done. As part of that help, we instilled our own attitudes and practices into the teams. Unfortunately, these attitudes and practices were not written down. Rather, they were an oral tradition that was passed from us to our customers.

By 1998, I realized that we needed to write down our process and practices so that we could better articulate them to our customers. So, I wrote many articles about process in the C++ Report. These articles missed the mark. They were informative, and in some cases entertaining, but instead of codifying the practices and attitudes that we actually used in our projects, they were an unwitting compromise to values that had been imposed upon me for decades. It took Kent Beck to show me that.

The Beck Connection

In late 1998, as I was fretting over codifying the Object-Mentor process, I ran into Kent's work on Extreme Programming (XP). The work was scattered through Ward Cunningham's wiki and was mixed with the writings oil many others. Still, with some work and diligence I was able to get the gist of what Kent was talking about. I was intrigued, but skeptical. Some of the things that XP talked about were exactly on target for my concept of a development process. Other things, however, like the lack of an articulated design step, left me puzzled.

Kent and I could not have come from more disparate software circumstances. He was a recognized Smalltalk consultant, and I was a recognized C++ consultant. Those two worlds found it difficult to communicate with one' another. There was an almost Kuhnian paradigm gulf between them.

Under other circumstances, I would never have asked Kent to write an article for the C++ Report. But the congruence of our thinking about process was able to breech the language gulf. In February of 1999, I met Kent in Munich at the OOP conference. He was giving a talk on XP in the room across from where I was giving a talk on principles of OOD. Being unable to hear that talk, I sought Kent out at lunch. We talked about XP, and I asked him to write an article for the C++ Report. It was a great article about an incident in which Kent and a coworker had been able to make a sweeping design change in a live system in a matter of an hour or so.

Over the next several months, I went through the slow process of sorting out my own fears about XP My greatest fear was in adopting a process in which there is no explicit up-front design step. I found myself balking at that. Didn't I have an obligation to my clients, and to the industry as a whole, to teach them that design is important enough to spend time on?

Eventually, I realized that I did not really practice such a step myself. Even in all the articles and books I had written about design, Booch diagrams, and UML diagrams, I had always used code as a way to verify that the diagrams were meaningful. In all my customer consulting, I would spend an hour or two helping them to draw diagrams and then I would direct them to explore those diagrams with code. I came to understand that though XP's words about design were foreign (in a Kuhnian sense), the practices behind the words were familiar to me.

My other fears about XP were easier to deal with. I had always been a closet pair programmer. XP gave me a way to come out of the closet and revel in my desire to program with a partner. Refactoring, continuous integration, and customer on-site were all very easy for me to accept. They were very close to the way I already advised my customers to work.

One practice of XP was a revelation for me. Test-first design sounds innocuous when you first hear it. It says to write test cases before you write production code. All production code is written to make failing test cases pass. I was not prepared for the profound ramifications that writing code this way would have. This practice has completely transformed the way I write software, and transformed it for the better. You can see that transformation in this book. Some of the code written in this book was written before 1999. You won't find test cases for that code. On the other hand, all of the code written after 1999 is presented with test cases, and the test cases are typically presented first. I'm sure you'll note the difference.

So, by the fall of 1999 I was convinced that Object Mentor should adopt XP as its process of choice and that I should let go of my desire to write my own process. Kent had done an excellent job of articu...

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Customer Reviews

If I Only Bought Two OOD Books, This Would be One of Them
I don't think I've given another design/programming book 5 stars before. This book deserves it-- it could easily replace a half dozen books on my shelf, and it probably will.

Martin focuses on the why's and the wherefores of current OOD methodologies. He doesn't try to sell Agile Processes in this book. Instead, he explains a number of current practices that might be loosely grouped under the 'Agile' name. He anchors his discussion in a set of principles that drive the design process. Then he shows how software patterns can be used to put these principles into practice.

Patterns are explained and demonstrated in the context of three case studies. The case studies (a payroll system, a weather monitoring system, and an exam testing system) have the feel of day-to-day problems. One of my chief complaints with other books has been the use of esoteric case studies-- unless I work for Microsoft, I'm not likely to write a word processor anytime soon. Okay, so maybe I won't write a weather station either, but it comes a lot closer to what I will do!

The patterns discussion in this book is down-to-earth and easily understood. I have struggled over the 'Gang of Four' book ('Gamma et Al, 'Design Patterns') for well over a year. Bob Martin's book has cut through a lot of the clutter and confusion. It has been a great help to me in understanding why, where, and when to use different patters. And the explanation of UML in the book's appendices is one of the best I have seen. I can't think of a better way to learn UML than to sit down with these Appendices and Martin Fowler's 'UML Distilled'.

This is one of the two books I would recommend to an OOD newbie. The other would be 'Object Design' by Rebecca Wirfs Brock and Alan McKean. These books provide a solid grounding in object-oriented design, while requiring a very reasonable expenditure of time and effort.

Clear, specifc, applicable
The bulk of this book describes OO design principles. They're presented in a readable, useful, and well-organized way. Often they just clarify and put a name to something you've probably been doing anyway. The standard Dependency Inversion Principle is there, for one. (I'm glad to see that other people have trouble with the name. By today's reckoning, there's nothing inverted about it, but the name dates back to less enlightened times.) Others, like the Interface Segregation Principle, are less well known but reinforce lots of other good practices, such as data hiding and prevention of "interface leakage".

The "Agile" section is blessedly short, and doesn't much contaminate the otherwise good presentation elsewhere in the book. There's a lot of good to be extracted from the agility movement, but there's a lot of rabid dogmatism too. Martin managed to keep it well under control. He presented the Manifesto (ugh) early on, but that was the worst of it.

A few points marred the book, but only slightly, The drawings came across as "cute" - unprofessional and tangential to the topics at hand. Semi-fictional conversations in books like this always seem fatuous to me, and Ch.6 was no exception. The technical content managed to withstand this presentation anyway.

This book has lots of good ideas. It relates those ideas well to common and useful design patterns. A few aspects of the book tried to be funny, but came across as more annoying than anything else. That was only a few, though - the meaningful content of the book came through despite those flaws.

I recommend this book to any serious student or practitioner of OO design and implementation. I really mean "any," since even project-scarred veterans are likely to see some of their hard won knowledge set into clear text and into the context of other ideas.

Best O-O design book in this year
I knew the book would be a great one before read it. But now, after I read some of its chapters, I know I underestimated it.

I love to read Uncle Bob's books and articles. His previous book "Designing Object-Oriented C++ Application with Booch Method" is a real gem, I learn much a lot from it, maybe more than any other books on designing. The author's style is unique, he tries to guide readers to reach a good design instead of just putting the final solution in front of you. He presents the whole process of design, shows you how to think, how to verify, how to test and modify. His is a real mentor who gives you solid knowledge and solid experience by solid examples. So, I expected learn a lot from this new book.

The book shows that it's more than my expectation. It keeps the good style, plus very valuable contents. It present at least 4 aspects which are very important and useful for today's programmers:

* Agile method: The author show you you how to USE agile method. Still he tell you a lot about "Why". I'm not a XPer, but after reading the first several chapters, I think I'd give a try.

* Object-Oriented Design Principles: The book concludes 11 O-O design principles. Only these principles are worth the price of the book to me.

* Design patterns: This book teach you 23 design patterns with concrete examples -- 15 are GoF patterns, 8 are new. The emphasis is how to use patterns in real applications, instead of telling you what design patterns are and how to document them.

* UML: This book is not about UML, but it uses UML to demostrate designs. To make you feet wet, it includes two appendics, show you basic UML with, again, concrete example. I find it's much easier for me to learn UML this way.

Well, IMHO, this book is the best O-O design textbook this year, and I wonder whether there will be a better one in the next several years.