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Summary: See the wood through the trees
Review: Few books deserve to be read more than once. I'll read this book again and again. It gives a very good introduction on realizing the paradigm shift, from several viewpoints (UML modeling, the process of iterative development, patterns, ...) without getting lost in details. This book promised me the great picture, and I got it.
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Summary: A practical approach
Review: The 2nd edition offers a very upto date, practical approach to OOAD. It is comprehensive yet still accessible. It is an ideal course book offering clear explanations which are not clouded by excessive terminology.
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Summary: The road from programmer to OO developer
Review: Trying to make the journey from programmer to OO developer? Have you learned an OOP language? Read a few books and articles on Use Cases, UML, Refactoring, Patterns and RUP? Do you have the vocabulary but still find yourself struggling with the grammar when you sit down and actually try to design and code an application? Yeah, yeah . . . you know it's an 'art', that's nice, but where do you start? How does all this OOA/OOD/OOP stuff work together? How do you apply it? If all of this seems familiar, look no more; Mr. Larman's book was written for you! For someone used to procedural programming, walking into OO land is like being dropped into the middle of a strange country without a map. Mr. Larman's book is the Fodor's travel guide you've been searching for. He places OO development in a context which is understandable while he explains the basics of each OO tool and describes how and where they are best used along the road that leads from a problem domain to a true OO application. The book is well written, provides real world examples of design problems you're likely to encounter and best of all: it is not a description of how someone else solved a particular problem! It gives you a framework you can use to solve development problems on your own! If you are trying to make that leap from programmer to OO developer; pick up this book and confirm for yourself that finally, finally you have found the right text to guide you on your journey.
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Summary: Paper Back edition available???
Review: Dear Author,The book is an excellent piece of work as far as OOAD goes, but such marvels should be made available to the student/practicing engineers as soon as possible and at a affordable cost... Pawan
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Summary: A continous success from the first edition
Review: The book reveals a continous sucess from the first edition. Several fixes to the content are applied. Sections on UP are newly added but only useful for novice. People who look for a deeper insight should look the RUP from Philippe Kruchten.
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Summary: Mr Larmen Sets a New Standard Again!
Review: If you've spent time learning the syntax of your OO language of choice, whether it be Java, smalltalk, C++ or C#. Now what?. Here is the book which will help you exploit that language to its full potential. The 2nd edition of craig Larmens' book is an absolute must for novice and experienced developers alike. His pleasant writing manner and way he presents this material is 2nd to none. Mr Larmen clears away the fog most people have when they start object orientated development. He provides the perfect roadmap for analysis, design, patterns and the unified process. Developers thinking of retraining from VB, C or pascal into Java or the new Csharp (C#) language will find this the book they turn to again and again. This is a must have book!
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Summary: The best tutorial on OOA/D
Review: This book nearly defies description in terms of the breath and depth of material it covers (and covers very well). In addition to OOA/D, you get essential and detailed information on Use Cases, Requirements gathering, UML, Design Patterns, and Iterative/Agile Development, as well as insights into Test Driven Development.And the best part: all of this information is carefully integrated so you really get a deep feeling for the multitude of skills it takes to be a software developer/architect in the 21st century. No book is a substitute for real world experience coupled with in depth instruction and mentoring, but this book comes as close as humanly possible to achieving those lofty goals without leaving your easy chair/workstation. Most in-depth books leave me with a headache - you get the gist, and then the brick wall goes up when you get to the details. Mr. Larman slowly and steadily gets you into the details without ever over simplifying, yet without sacrificing the "meat" Bravo!
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Summary: Underlying principles and practice: Excellent job.
Review: There is a lot of textbooks on UML in the market, similarly on development processes like the Unified Process, design patterns and OOA/D. Many textbooks that I have seen provide a dry list of UML notations, or a dry list of process guidelines, or trivial examples on how a design pattern can be implemented. However, no other textbook in my opinion makes an excellent job in putting everything together in a case study (the 3rd edition provides two case studies) in order to illustrate (1) what is the significance of each one of the above, (2) how they fit together and (3) what are possible tradeoffs. The author very clearly explains what are the underlying principes behind object-oriented software development and (more importantly) how these principles can be put into practice.
Since the first edition I found Craig's writing style very easy to follow and as a graduate student taking software engineering and related classes I used this textbook as a self study to learn about OOA/D and UML. As an instructor I have been using this textbook for a number of software engineering and related classes (both senior level undergraduate and graduate), and the feedback I receive from students is very positive. I also recommend this book to students who are undertaking final-year undergraduate projects or graduate projects, and we have found this book to be very valuable for projects that involve several stages of analysis, design and implementation and who want to know how a process such as the Unified Process can be used in an agile manner. My experience tells me that this last point is very important for students who would work individually or in small groups over a (usually) short period of time to complete a development project.
Several of my previous students who are now employed in the IT industry as developers are telling me that they still use this book and find it a very valuable reference.
The book has also sparked interesting discussions among colleagues and researchers on various aspects on OOA/D and it is a valuable source. More particularly, the book successfully manages to integrate the principle of Design by Contract beyond implementation. Craig's approach to introduce operation contracts places emphasis on assertions from early stages of development and shows how this emphasis is propagated to detailed design (through UML communication diagrams) and through the use of responsibility patterns.
Regarding a comment on GRASP by a previous (and anonymous) reviewer, I would like to point out that a pattern is a set of principles (can be on any level of granularity) that solves a recurring problem at any stage during development. This (albeit informal) definition does not confine patterns to structural or behavioral design (along the lines of the GoF design patterns). Craig makes that very clear in the book particularly in the second and third edition) and I'm afraid to say that the reviewer who made the comment either skipped that part or misunderstood it.
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Summary: Great for learning OOA/D
Review: I've come from a mainframe background. I took C++ and Java classes and still didn't know how to design OO. This book has helped me cross that bridge. Highly recommended!
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Summary: Great book, nearly fatal whopper
Review: GRASP is a series of patterns? That's a pile of crap. GRASP is a list of design techniques and principles. Calling the elements of GRASP "patterns" is a serious violation of semantic integrity and precision, and makes the book a lot less valuable than it should be.
Considering the semantic precision of the rest of the book (its intent is, ironically enough, to teach us semantic precision), this mis-labeling of one of its truly central elements creates a jarring cognitive dissonance.
I make a big deal of this because the GRASP principles are introduced at the pivotal moment in the process when analysis is being rendered into design. This is the moment where the rubber meets the road, and the moment that most of us buy such books for. To be led astray just exactly then by this whopper of a misclassification is a nearly fatal flaw.
The fact that the rest of the book is really terrific makes up for this, hence the restoration of 3 stars. The workaround is also fairly trivial: if the reader simply repeats (like Dorothy with "There's no place like home...") "GRASP is a collection of principles. There are no patterns in GRASP," then the problem completely corrects itself, and the book becomes useful again.
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