The Object-Oriented Thought Process

On my way to better understand object-oriented programming (t d) and thereby check “Learn enough Objective-C to be dangerous” off my ThingsToDo list, I picked up The Object-Oriented Thought Process by Matt Weisfeld.

Not having formal training in software engineering, I found the book’s focus on the language-agnostic basics of OO extremely helpful.

Here’s what I learned from the book:

• Classes are almost always nouns
• A Class’s ‘Responsibilities’ are almost always verbs
• In the Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern;
  • Model = the application object, the data-model
  • View = the screen presentation
  • Controller = the user interface’s response to user input
  • (this wasn’t as helpful as I’d like, it may just need to sink in)
• ‘is-a’ relationship = one object is a specific version of a more general object (e.g. Hamlin is a turtle)
• ‘has-a’ relationship = one object has another object contained within it (e.g. a bicycle has a seat)
• Patterns are general principles for solving programming problems
• AntiPatterns are specific examples of programming problems solved poorly or solutions to redeem poorly-solved problems

Weisfeld was mostly language-agnostic, he uses Java (t d) for his examples. At times, the example code gets in the way of the illustrating the point. With the little I know about Ruby (t d) (100% object-oriented, simpler syntax than Java), I may have chosen that language to illustrate OO principles to novices.

If you’re looking for a non-programming book to wrap your head around OO, I haven’t found an alternative to The Object-Oriented Thought Process.