OOP DeMystified by Jim Keogh, Mario Giannini

[Book Review Team]

<pre>Author/s : Jim Keogh, Mario Giannini
Publisher : McGraw Hill/Osborne
Category : Beginning Java
Review by : Gregg Bolinger
Rating : 8 horseshoes</pre>
McGraw Hill/Osborne has a book series coined DeMystified and have recently extended the series into the computer science area. The books target readers who want to learn complex subjects in an easy non-technical manner without formal training and who have limited time.
OOP DeMystified succeeds whole heartedly in this attempt. Beginning with the basics of an object and continuing on into classes, polymorphism, inheritance, collaboration, interfaces, and all the other ideas central to the OOP philosophy, this book uses real world examples like a Person or a Sales Order Form to help the reader understand the underlying concepts of Object Oriented Programming.
There are a few code examples in both C++, Java, and at one point even C# to help solidify the ideas trying to be expressed but nothing over the top or complicated.
The only real problem I had with this book is that sometimes, in the attempt to leave out the "technical jargon" ideas and concepts were overly explained and seemed to get a bit wordy making the concept more complicated than need be but overall this book stood behind its promise to be "concise the thorough..."
I would recommend this book to anyone needing a very basic concept of Object Oriented Programming. The book is written somewhat as a text book with quizzes as the end of each chapter. I think this book would be a good supplement to any OO language programming course but definitely needs a code centric book so that the concept may be backed up with working examples.


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[Book Review Team]

<pre>Review by : Dirk Schreckmann
Rating : 8 horseshoes</pre>
OOP DeMystified is an excellent book, targeted at programmers new to object-oriented programming, that clearly explains the fundamental concepts of object-oriented thinking and programming, in the same manner as we use around the JavaRanch Saloon and as I've used for teaching at work for years.
The entire book, and most of the explanations, are short, complete, clear and to the point. Each chapter is followed by well-targeted review questions, that help the reader verify whether they've understood what should be understood. After reading the book, new programmers are sure to come away confident and feeling, "Object-Oriented programming - I get it!" I loaned the book to three new programmers before writing this review. They all "get it" now.
This book is not intended to replace a standard introductory programming book. It's not full of complete syntax examples and explanations or programming exercises. OOP DeMystified is designed to be a very good supplement to a course or book on object-oriented programming.
In this reviewer's opinion, a couple of the explanations weren't perfect and could use reworking. Despite that, as mentioned it's an excellent book and I'd recommend this book to any programmer new to object-oriented thinking, to supplement their studies.


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