Bertrand Meyer (1) (1950–)

A classic text on object oriented software languages and development, and one of the top 20 best software development books. It is both detailed and comprehensive yet surprisingly accessible. Some of the topics and concepts are advanced, but the reader only needs a basic computer science foundation (e.g. understanding big-oh notion) to follow Myers' journey through the basics on into the the depths of object oriented languages and programming. It is a very large book and a very useful reference, but I highly recommend reading the chapters in sequential order. A highlight of the book, for me, included one of the early chapters where he presents object oriented languages in a historical context, showing how the limitations of top-down programming directly lead to the bottom-up approach of oo. While Myers is detailed and comprehensive, some parts receive short shrift. For example, much is made of the programming abstractions and their powerful realization in oo languages. But as any experienced oo developer will tell you, it's almost worse to use too much abstraction. Myers does mention the *principles* of how to properly throttle back your oo abstractions, but his principles seem ad hoc and are not presented in the context of abstraction.… (more)

This is considered a classical book on object-oriented programming. It's quite hefty, and not easy to read from cover to cover. However, there's a lot in here worth reading. The material on "design by contract" is especially interesting, and I hadn't encountered a full treatment of the topic before. Throughout the book, Meyer uses the Eiffel programming language to illustrate the OO concepts, though he doesn't tell you that his notation is based on Eiffel until the end of the book. Having learned OO from C++ and Java, I had a hard time getting my mind wrapped around the different notation.… (more)