<pre>
Author/s : Kirk Knoernschild
Publisher : Addison-Wesley
Category : Design
Review by : Junilu Lacar
Rating : 4 horseshoes</pre>
At first glance, this book looks promising. It has all the right stuff listed in the table of contents: general principles of object-oriented design,
patterns, refactoring, incremental development, UML, RUP, and even XP. Don't be fooled though because the actual discussion is introductory at best with an almost incidental treatment of
Java and how it ties in with the UML, modeling, designing, and creating what the author likes to call a "resilient architecture."
While the book discusses a lot of things that
you should know about OO design, UML and iterative development processes, it lacks the focus and depth needed for it to be truly useful. The discussion on UML and design revolves mainly around two use cases and there are very few other examples. Most of the time the author is introducing a new concept and constantly referring to other parts of the book where it will be or has been discussed in detail. However, when I got to the end of the book I was still expecting more detailed discussions and had to go back to see what I missed.
You'll probably get more bang for your buck with Martin Fowler's books on UML and refactoring and Craig Larman's book on UML, patterns and the Unified Process. These books are filled with the examples that "Java Design" sorely lacks. For OO design principles, read the articles by Bob Martin published on
http://www.objectmentor.com. More info at Amazon.com ||
More info at Amazon.co.uk
