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I am on the quest to be a good OO-developer. OO intrigues me, because I understand the patterns, know why composition gives you more flexibility then inheritance, and more of such wisdom. However, I came to the conclusion that I know how to implement a factory of a singleton, but that I do not know how to come up with a robust OO design.

I have a bunch of books

  1. Design Patterns by the GoF
  2. AntiPatterns Brown et al.
  3. Refactoring by Fowler
  4. Code complete 2

They might be very good books, but they don't teach you to architect an application. I am often paralysed by some very basic decisions (example). I am looking for a book that teaches the when and why. There are many books about hammers and nails, but I have yet to find a book that tells you something about their practical relationship.

What book was most instrumental in making you a confident OO-architect/designer?

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Exception e
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    Please mark poll questions "community wiki". – danben Jan 29 '10 at 13:40
  • I doubt if this is a real poll. Some answers have more than one recommendation. Maybe it's better to let the system decide this? – Exception e Jan 29 '10 at 14:20
  • "the system decide this"? What? You -- as owner -- can mark the question as community wiki. You edit the question, click community wiki, and we can more easily edit the answers to create a great list of responses. – S.Lott Jan 29 '10 at 15:27
  • I looked up "community wiki" on meta. There it is stated that besides moderators or the original author the system could automatically turn a question into a wiki based on some characteristics. Nonetheless I don't see any harm in one or the other so I turned it into a community wiki per your request :-) – Exception e Jan 29 '10 at 15:33
  • just a precision: the books you have listed are not about OOAD at all but about OOP. Specifically, they are workaround around idiosynchrasies pertaining to the language you're using and the fact that there are a lot of things that cannot be easily done in such languages when translating from OOAD to OOP due to their shortcomings. Most design patterns are workaround 3GL defects. I vote +1 people recommanding Meyer's "Object Oriented Sotware Construction": *this* is about OOAD. Not that they aren't good book, but as you've noticed: they're not about OOAD at all. – SyntaxT3rr0r Feb 18 '10 at 17:53
  • You can't just expect to read a book and not apply with hands-on practice. By far the best resource to learn and get hands-on practice with excellent assignments is a course called "Master Object Oriented Design in Java" - offered on Udemy.com. They usually have promotions or you can probably find a coupon code online to enroll in the course. Good luck! – Horse Voice Jan 20 '15 at 16:57

10 Answers10

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  1. "Object-oriented software construction" by Bertrand Meyer

Most fundamental work about object-orientation ever published. This is absolutely must have book for every "object-oriented" programmmer.

2. "Object-Oriented Analysis and Design with Applications" by Grady Booch et al

Not so formal as Meyer's book, but this book can open your eyes on many questions in object-oriented world and in software development in general

3. "Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software" by Erich Gamma et al.

This is famous "Gang of Four" book about design patterns

4. "Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code" by Martin Fowler et al.

This is another classical book. First part perfectly describe many problem that modern software developer may faced during his work: code smells, readability vs performance, premature optimization drawbacks and many other topics.

5. "Thinking in Java" by Bruce Eckel

This book may help many beginners not only in Java language but in object-oriented way of thinking too.

6. "Touch of Class: Learning to Program Well with Objects and Contracts" by Bertrand Meyer

Excellent textbook by famous author.

Daniel Daranas
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Sergey Teplyakov
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    A warning about Booch. The book is written in a sort high brow manner, ( In this book, he tends to write using a grammar and vocabulary intended to impress intelligensia. ) which makes it very hard to read. The content is more about laying out the problems with design rather then showing actual techniques to solve them. So it does not have many heuristics. – HandyGandy Jan 29 '10 at 15:00
  • @HandyGandy: is this why you recommended "Designing Object Oriented C++ Applications Using The Booch Method", as it would fill that gap? – Exception e Jan 29 '10 at 15:41
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The best book I ever read about OO is Bertrand Meyer Object Oriented Software Construction.

Its huge but it was very useful for me. It covers every single aspect of OO design IMVHO.

Alexander Poluektov
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  • Could you tell me what to expect from Bertrand Meyer's book? I read that you could see it as a rationale for the Eiffel language. I don't know Eiffel but for example does he show the importance of delegates and how they are a fist class citizen of Eiffel, or does he really treat subjects like discovering classes and responsibilities? – Exception e Jan 29 '10 at 14:14
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    Eiffel is very secondary topic in his book. Despite that most examples are written in Eiffel, I think you should experience no difficulties while reading it. Some features are, of course, specific to Eiffel (notably Design-by-Contract built-in features), but they are perfectly readable, and would be useful in whatever language you are working on. (BTW I don't know Eiffel either). – Alexander Poluektov Jan 29 '10 at 14:20
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I fully understand your situation. Also own three of those books ;) I'd suggest the Head First edition. Object-Oriented Analysis and Design. This will get you on the right tracks. The GoF book is great but of no use until you get the basics through your head and the Head First book will take care of that. Cheers :)

Peter Perháč
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  • Thnx, it makes me feel I am not alone. I always thought the Head First series were meant to give a give a too basic though gentle introduction. I will look into this suggestion! – Exception e Jan 29 '10 at 13:59
  • Yes, go through Head First OOAD first. Which book did you end up buying? – Kumar Vaibhav May 13 '16 at 16:24
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Oldies but goodies.

HandyGandy
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Actually doing programming is a bigger help than reading about doing programming.

"paralysed by some very basic decisions" is a symptom of a deeper problem -- over-engineering. Until you build a lot of stuff, you don't really know which decisions matter and which don't matter.

The best way to get the necessary experience is to build a lot of stuff.

Code Kata is very, very important. http://slott-softwarearchitect.blogspot.com/search/label/code-kata

Also, I collected a bunch of code kata that I have used into a single, large project. http://homepage.mac.com/s_lott/books/oodesign.html

S.Lott
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    Although this is not a book they look like well-documented and well-motivated use cases. thnx for the pointer – Exception e Jan 29 '10 at 14:03
  • @S.Lott: I would like to know your views on OOAD (keeping the OP's question in mind). Do you think OO has a life in it anymore? I think everything is turning functional, eventually. And, people still don't have 1 good way of writing OO code. And that makes people fight over style of OO. Seperation of concerns/OCP etc seems to fit well for functional style (note: I don't have any experience at all in functional prog. languages. But this is what my gut feel is, after writing "OO" code for some period & thinking it is losing its value). Your say will help :) – shahkalpesh Jan 29 '10 at 14:05
  • Functional software systems also struggle with issues of large-scale design and information hiding. The Design Patterns book has been characterized by some as ways of doing FP in OO. Well, I'm still waiting for the corresponding book on achieving OO information hiding and controlled reuse in FP... – Pontus Gagge Jan 29 '10 at 14:08
  • OO is not replaced by functional. Functional OO programming is what I do. I'm a heavy user of Stateless objects in Python. There is no "1 good way" to do anything, so that's not an objection to OO. OO is not "losing value" in any sense of the word. You're learning about functional, but you still know about Objects and will still use them in a functional style. – S.Lott Jan 29 '10 at 15:29
  • @Exception e: A "book" for code kata is silly. It would go out of date every few hours. The other link *is* a book. I don't get your comment and I don't understand why "book" is so important. Books are web sites pressed into paper, aren't they? – S.Lott Jan 29 '10 at 15:32
  • @S.Lott: I am not saying that OO will be replaced by functional. Also, what do you mean by using Objects in functional style (are you talking about something like LINQ here?) Any example of OO (in the sense of classes & subclasss etc) with functional style will help me understand that. Thanks a lot for writing back. – shahkalpesh Jan 29 '10 at 15:42
  • @shahkalpesh: (1) This is off-task for this question. (2) Comments aren't an easy way to address this. The FP/OO question has already been asked on Stack Overflow, search for and read those questions first. Feel free to add comments to get more information. If necessary, consider asking a new question on this FP/OO topic. – S.Lott Jan 29 '10 at 16:47
  • @S.Lott: have you read Meyer's "Object-oriented software construction" like several people with more votes than you suggested and do you think it is a "web sites pressed into paper"? (I suppose you don't want to discuss this in a comment). Also, do you think your writings are better at explaining OOA/D than Meyer's highly regarded "Object-Oriented Software Construction" *book*? – SyntaxT3rr0r Feb 18 '10 at 18:00
  • @WizardOfOdds: Yes, I've read Meyer's book. Twice. No, it's pretty stable, static stuff on how to do OO well from fundamental principles. Hence the need to invent a new language. My book doesn't make a big effort to "explain" OOA/D; it is a series of exercises based on some prior knowledge of OOP, and it just dives in and does it. It's some narrative on what problem is being solved and some design details. Build a bunch of stuff. Learn by doing. – S.Lott Feb 18 '10 at 18:31
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Robert C. Martin "Agile Software Development: Principles, Patterns and Practices" that explains you the principles of OO

Eric Evans: "Domain Driven Design" deals with how to make a good design that corresponds to your business problem

Martin Fowler: "Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture" for basic principles on enterprise architecture

bertolami
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The only way to find out if a design is robust is to implement it. There is no single book that will teach you how to produce implementable designs, it comes down to experience and talent. However, I do second the vote for Bertrand Meyer's book - just be aware it won't turn you into an OO design god.

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Craig Larman's Applying UML and Patterns summarized a lot about what I had learned from experience. What I like about it is that it addresses all the aspects of software design -- which includes things like iterative design and development. Don't stare too hard at the use of UML: design descriptions are a means towards an end, and I found Larman's approach fairly pragmatic. You can't just code: you have to communicate your intentions (and understand what is needed). UML and cleanly designed, well commented code are some of the means towards that end.

And, of course, as others mention: no book will make you a good developer or designer. But it might help accelerate the process.

Pontus Gagge
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For a starter, I suggest Head First Object Oriented Analysis and Design. It guides you to build an OO application in a simple intuitive step by step method.

Emad Gabriel
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Although leaning towards Rational UP I've found these two to offer a lot of insight into OO design.

  • Applying UML and Patterns - Craig Larman
  • UML 2 and the Unified Process: Practical Object-Oriented Analysis and Design - Jim Arllow & Ila Neustadt
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