The Object Primer
In my last weblog entry, I explained that I had decided to go back to basics and learn the true fundamentals of object-oriented programming.
The first book I purchased was The Object Primer, by Scott Ambler. As you will see from its list of contents, this book would have been more aptly named The Agile Primer. Or maybe, Yet Another Sales Pitch for UML.
Maybe I don’t understand book publishing (after all, I’m not in that industry), but if someone writes a book titled The Object Primer, you’d kind of hope that it talks mainly about the objects of object-oriented programming. If I wanted to learn about Agile development or UML, I’d have bought a book with a different title. The argument could be made that object-oriented programming and UML go hand-in-hand. I disagree: they can, and should, be separated in a book that purports to be a primer on objects. If a book were to explain the cells that make up blood (a reasonable analogy to the objects that make up OOP), then it can and should talk about cells and blood, and not about the Petrie dishes and microscopes that allow us to see the cells (the “tools” of blood, just as UML is a tool of OOP).
So The Object Primer provided a bit of a refresher on the topic of objects, but certainly did not explain anything that I did not already know. If anyone else is hoping to learn the true fundamentals of object-oriented programming, I would not recommend this book.
by Alister Jones | Next up: Building Object Applications That Work →
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