The Book’s Approach

It should be obvious by now that I am a firm believer in becoming comfortable with the object-oriented thought process before jumping into a programming language or modeling language. This book is filled with examples of code and UML diagrams; however, you do not need to know a specific programming language or UML to read it. After all I have said about learning the concepts first, why is there so much Java, C# .NET, VB .NET, and Objective-C code, as well as so many UML diagrams? First, they are great for illustrating OO concepts. Second, they are vital to the OO process and should be addressed at an introductory level. The key is not to focus on Java, C# .NET, VB .NET, and Objective-C or UML, but to use them as aids in the understanding of the underlying concepts.

Note that I really like using UML class diagrams as a visual aid in understanding classes, and their attributes and methods. In fact, the class diagrams are the only component of UML that is used in this book. I believe that the UML class diagrams offer a great way to model the conceptual nature of object models. I continue to use object models as an educational tool to illustrate class design and how classes relate to one another.

The code examples in the book illustrate concepts such as loops and functions. However, understanding the code itself is not a prerequisite for understanding the concepts; it might be helpful to have a book at hand that covers specific languages’ syntax if you want to get more detailed.

I cannot state too strongly that this book does not teach Java, C# .NET, VB .NET, Objective-C, or UML, all of which can command volumes unto themselves. It is my hope that this book will whet your appetite for other OO topics, such as OO analysis, object-oriented design, and OO programming.