Object-Oriented Software Construction is a book by Bertrand Meyer

Bertrand Meyer

Bertrand Meyer is an academic, author, and consultant in the field of computer languages. He created the Eiffel programming language.-Education and academic career:...

, widely considered a foundational text of object-oriented programming

Object-oriented programming

Object-oriented programming is a programming paradigm using "objects" – data structures consisting of data fields and methods together with their interactions – to design applications and computer programs. Programming techniques may include features such as data abstraction,...

. The first edition was published in 1988; the second, extensively revised and expanded edition (more than 1300 pages), in 1997. Numerous translations are available including Dutch (first edition only), French (1+2), German (1), Italian (1), Japanese (1+2), Polish (2), Romanian (1), Russian (2), Serbian (2), and Spanish (2). The influence of the book can be measured by the thousands of citations of the book in computer science literature.
The book won a Jolt award

Jolt Awards

The Jolt Awards are awards in the software industry.Since 1990, the Dr. Dobb's Jolt Product Excellence Awards have been presented annually to showcase products that have "jolted" the industry with their significance and made the task of creating software faster, easier, and more efficient.Jolt Cola...

 in 1994.

Unless otherwise indicated, descriptions below apply to the second edition.

Focus

The book, known among its fans as "OOSC", presents object technology as an answer to major issues of software engineering, with a special emphasis on addressing the software quality factors of correctness, robustness, extendibility and reusability. It starts with an examination of the issues of software quality, then introduces abstract data type

Abstract data type

In computing, an abstract data type is a mathematical model for a certain class of data structures that have similar behavior; or for certain data types of one or more programming languages that have similar semantics...

s as the theoretical basis for object technology and proceeds with the main object-oriented techniques: classes, objects

Object (computer science)

In computer science, an object is any entity that can be manipulated by the commands of a programming language, such as a value, variable, function, or data structure...

, genericity

Generic programming

In a broad definition, generic programming is a style of computer programming in which algorithms are written in terms of to-be-specified-later types that are then instantiated when needed for specific types provided as parameters...

, inheritance

Inheritance (computer science)

In object-oriented programming , inheritance is a way to reuse code of existing objects, establish a subtype from an existing object, or both, depending upon programming language support...

, Design by Contract

Design by contract

Design by contract , also known as programming by contract and design-by-contract programming, is an approach to designing computer software...

, concurrency

Concurrency (computer science)

In computer science, concurrency is a property of systems in which several computations are executing simultaneously, and potentially interacting with each other...

, and persistence

Persistence (computer science)

Persistence in computer science refers to the characteristic of state that outlives the process that created it. Without this capability, state would only exist in RAM, and would be lost when this RAM loses power, such as a computer shutdown....

. It includes extensive discussions of methodological issues.

Table of contents

Preface etc. Part A: The issues 1 Software quality 2 Criteria of object orientation Part B: The road to object orientation 3 Modularity 4 Approaches to reusability 5 Towards object technology 6 Abstract data types Part C: Object-oriented techniques 7 The static structure: classes 8 The run-time structure: objects 9 Memory management 10 Genericity 11 Design by Contract: building reliable software 12 When the contract is broken: exception handling 13 Supporting mechanisms 14 Introduction to inheritance 15 Multiple inheritance 16 Inheritance techniques 17 Typing 18 Global objects and constants

Part D: Object-oriented methodology: applying the method well 19 On methodology 20 Design pattern: multi-panel interactive systems 21 Inheritance case study: “undo” in an interactive system 22 How to find the classes 23 Principles of class design 24 Using inheritance well 25 Useful techniques 26 A sense of style 27 Object-oriented analysis 28 The software construction process 29 Teaching the method Part E: Advanced topics 30 Concurrency, distribution, client-server and the Internet 31 Object persistence and databases 32 Some O-O techniques for graphical interactive applications

Part F: Applying the method in various languages and environments 33 O-O programming and Ada 34 Emulating object technology in non-O-O environments 35 Simula to Java and beyond: major O-O languages and environments Part G: Doing it right 36 An object-oriented environment Epilogue, In Full Frankness Exposing the Language Part H: Appendices A Extracts from the Base library B Genericity versus inheritance C Principles, rules, precepts and definitions D A glossary of object technology E Bibliography Index

Notation

The first edition of the book used Eiffel

Eiffel (programming language)

Eiffel is an ISO-standardized, object-oriented programming language designed by Bertrand Meyer and Eiffel Software. The design of the language is closely connected with the Eiffel programming method...

 for the examples and served as a justification of the language design choices for Eiffel. The second edition also uses Eiffel as its notation, but in an effort to separate the notation from the concepts it does not name the language until the Epilogue, on page 1162, where "Eiffel" appears as the last word. A few months after publication of the second edition, a reader posted on Usenet

Usenet

Usenet is a worldwide distributed Internet discussion system. It developed from the general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name.Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979 and it was established in 1980...

his discovery that the book's 36 chapters alternatively start with the letters "E", "I", "F", "F", "E", "L", a pattern being repeated 6 times. In addition, in the Appendix, titled "Epilogue, In Full Frankness Exposing the Language" (note the initials), the first letters of each paragraph spell out the same pattern.

External links

• Book's page at Eiffel Software
• Page on Spanish translation
• Bertrand Meyer's publication page