Head First Object-Oriented Analysis and Design

Head First Object-Oriented Analysis and Design
Authors: By Brett McLaughlin, Gary Pollice, David West
Published: November, 2006
Publisher: O'Reilly Media, Inc.
ISBN-10: 0-596-00867-8
ISBN-13: 9780596008673
Pages: 600

Reviewed March 12, 2007
by Kirk Holbrook, Manager
Maine Flash Platform User Group

This is a good introduction to object oriented analysis and design (OOA&D), as well as use cases and class modeling. The authors lead the reader through several different scenarios (some of them progressively tied together and some of them standalone). The "build-it-up and then tear-it-apart and analyze it" methods seem to fit well for whom I suspect are the target audience for the book: developers who know how to program, but maybe don't have the best skills in needs analysis up-front.

Head First Object-Oriented Analysis and Design is the first (and currently only) book that I've read in the Head First series. The concepts are easily understood and there is a minimum of prior knowledge of Object Oriented Design required as a pre-requisite for reading the book. There's a good bit of humor and lightening up of the subject matter. The ideas are comprehensible, but I do understand other reviewers' comments about the layout and design of these books. It is rather all-over-the-place, with wacky fonts and "fridge magnet" pages (as I understand the Head First series is generally), but the concepts do come across pretty clearly. It's still pretty obvious what the different, wacky fonts are doing to engage the reader, and they do follow a graphic design scheme for the book.

There are some very heady topics discussed in the book, but the scenarios and various methods of describing the problems and solutions provide an accessible, understandable introduction to OOA&D.

The examples are all Java-based, but if you program in another language, you should be able to follow along without much difficulty.

The table of contents could benefit from some better tie-in to the industry-standard terms that are the topics in the chapters/sections (at least add in and bold the terms, such as Delegation, Encapsulation, Polymorphism, etc.). A glossary might be a handy addition, too.

Generally, I'd say this is a good introduction to Object Orient Analysis and Design, and it is certainly not a reference book.