Object Design: Roles, Responsibilities, and Collaborations

I skimmed the book as most of it felt targeted at those that are inexperienced at OO design. I did find the occasional insight and everything seemed right on the money. The idea to organize your thinking around small clusters of responsibilities is a useful heuristic. I can see the relationship with the SRP and ISP (the S and I of SOLID design principles). I really appreciate the references to other materials as well as commenting on them. It's very classy and sadly not that common anymore. I'd heartily recommend the book for those that are new to OO design. Those with more experience will enjoy it too although they'll get less out of it. This book is referred to by so many other classics so I had to check it out. It made me wonder "what happened to the author?". Looks like she's active in DDD land which makes sense. Look forward to checking out what she's doing there.

Wirfs-Brock and McKean have written an oustanding introductory book on object-oriented design. This is definitely a book for beginning OO programmers, the ones who aren't sure how to assign functions to objects and who aren't ready for design patterns yet. More experienced developers won't get much out of it, but that's OK. Every level needs its own reference books. The book's layout and illustrations present its content well. UML diagrams, for example, use one color and typeface for the actual UML notation. The same diagrams use a different color and typeface for notes that explain the UML. Unlike other books, there's no confusion about which is the tool and which describes the tool. The text is gentle and reasonably jargon-free, but I think it over-does the friendliness in places. In discussing a program's normal and exception handling behavior, the term "happy path" described the execution in the absence of errors. The term may be evocative, but is just a bit hard to take seriously. The sequence of topics makes good sense. It starts with the idea of a "responsibility," the basic unit of application logic. The authors develop this into strategies for defining objects, defining relationships between objects, and defining the control strategies that implement those relationships. They continue on through error handling (reliability) and extensibility - handling of future features. Throughout, the authors keep a moderate, pragmatic tone, free of name-brand methodology. That's a good thing, since the real focus is on basic skills and decision criteria. One aspect of this book is just a little confusing. It's definitely aimed at educating a new OO designer, but it doesn't lay out its educational objectives or plan very clearly. It certainly lacks the didactic rigor of a textbook. It would make a good supplementary text, though, and it might be very helpful to a novice working with more experienced developers. Best of all, it refers to additional texts (including Strunk and White!) that will help claify the programs as well as communication with other members of the programming team. This book is great for anyone starting OO design on their own. It's also good for classroom students who just aren't getting it from their regular instructor and text. Experienced developers won't find much new here, except very clear descriptions of how much error handling or flexibility is enough.//wiredweird

I have to agree with some earlier reviews on this book.1. Very Good Text on Object Design,2. A great first text on OO design,3. Total Disappointment for ProgrammersThis is a great book on Object Oriented Design, but ONLY for novice and intermediate object modelers. It is not for an experienced developer who already knows how to use some of the design patterns in Gang of Four book.If we use an analogy to compare this two books, if Gang of Four Design Pattern book is for post graduate students, Object Design is for the student in the second year of the university.I want to read more on Object Oriented development so I started to read this book, mainly attracted by its cover. Domain Driven Design by Eric Avans falls into the same category but offers much more exercise for your brain.Hope this is helpful. I have 10+ years in software development, 7+ years in Java, understand OO and Domain Driven Design.5 Star Book for a beginner.

Great book for object analysis and design. This is not a book for programming (in C#, Java, etc.) as there is hardly any code in the whole book. This is about design and focuses on doing design that allocates responsibilities, discovers the participant objects in a system and creates solutions with the right collaborations between those participant objects. There are a few UML diagrams in the book but this isn't a book on UML either - you can read, understand and apply the material in this book with no background in UML. Would be a great book for the person learning object oriented analysis and design (OOAD) but as OOAD is the dominant form these days is really just a good book on contemporary system design.

What I like about this book is that it gives you another point of view about object analysis and design. The book is full of tips and examples so it is easy to read and understand.

more desciprtive than other booksbut restrictive sample codeanother defact is that oop is old..functional is more trendy and strict

Recommended by a colleague. This is a definite must read for the serious developer. One of the few tech books I'll probably read again.

There is nothing in this book that Design Patterns does not cover. Get the latter as it is both theoretical and practical with plenty of source code examples.