OOPs I need a book

[Jonathan Duncan]

On Tue, 7 Nov 2006, Shane Hathaway wrote:

> Levi Pearson wrote:
>> On Nov 7, 2006, at 7:55 AM, Jonathan Duncan wrote:
>>> Can anyone suggest to me a programming language agnostic book on OOP
>>> theory?
>>>
>>
>> I would guess that Chris's suggestion is pretty good, though I haven't
>> read it myself.  You will not find a completely agnostic book on OOP
>> theory, though, because object oriented programming isn't sufficiently
>> well-defined.  It means very different things to different people, and
>> different languages have their own opinions, so to speak, on what OOP is.
>
> In particular, you'll find that static typing has a strong effect on
> what people think OOP is.  The canonical Design Patterns book expects
> static typing and thus applies well to C++ and Java, but many of the
> patterns become irrelevant when applied to dynamic languages.  For
> example, in Python, the factory pattern is in a sense built in to the
> language, since constructors and functions are called the same way.
>
>> The examples within are in Java, but the concepts translate fairly
>> easily to C++.   Although some people are saying these days that design
>> patterns are signs of language deficiency,
>
> That sentiment comes directly from the LISP community.  It's both right
> and wrong.  It's right because a more flexible language like LISP lets
> you eliminate the repetition that sometimes arises from design patterns.
> However, another intent of design patterns is to express the design of
> the software to other developers, and that alone has obvious value.
>
>> Once you get your OOP skills honed, you should try mastering some
>> Functional Programming skills.  It's fun, and the wave of the future! ;)
>
> You may be right. :-)
>

Chris, Levi, and Shane, thanks for the book ideas.  They all look like 
pretty good books and have good reviews on Amazon.  Maybe I will have to 
get all three.

I did not want to mention PHP because it really does not need to be 
mentioned, but I am currently delving into PHP 5 and wanted to make sure 
my OOP training was well-founded be before I get too far into PHP 5. 
While it is a language that I commonly use, I do not want to limit myself. 
In college I poked around in Fortran, Lisp, Pascal, Java, and C++.  I have 
also played with Perl and tcl/tk.

I have never really taken the time, until know, to really build best OOP 
practices.  I figure it is better late than never.  Hence the search for a 
good OOP theory book.  The design books are welcome also.  I have "PHP 5 
Objects, Patterns, and Practices" that I have been reading and I have been 
realizing that I need to start at a more fundamental level.  I was 
planning on getting "Beginning PHP 5 and MySQL" and then decided that I 
should first go even more fundamental and get into theory.

If any of this information helps clarify what I am looking for I welcome 
further book suggestions.  If not, I will just decide from among those 
that have been given.

I appreciate the help.

Jonathan