Does "An Introduction to Object-Oriented Programming" by Timothy Budd still have value?

Question

If one has a good understanding of the different principles that make up OOP does the book "An Introduction to Object-Oriented Programming" by Timothy Budd would still have value to read?

It's mentioned in a few texts and it sounds like a great book to read when you're starting off but what if you've got a bit of experience under your belt?

Answer 1

Any (good) book on the fundamentals of OO Design is going to be a good read whether you're experienced or not.

I find that I catch little bits and pieces in different resources. The more little bits and pieces you have...the better you can figure out how to piece them together to get a better picture of the whole.

Answer 2

Amazon has several used copies starting at $25.99, so I'd say it's worth about $25.

As for its educational value, I suspect it has at least one insight (maybe more) that you won't find in any other book. Or, that is to say, if you read it you will probably learn something. Whether or not that gem is worth sifting through the rest or not is pretty much dependent on you. Just skim through it next time you're at the store and read a bit. You should be able to make the call pretty quickly.

Answer 3

Object oriented principles have not changed that radically over time where this type of book would be "out of date." It may not have a C# specific treatment for example, but it does have C++ and Java. There will be small discrepancies in language features that did not exist in 2001, but overall the content will still be very relevant. I was unaware of this book until your post, and I think I am going to buy it. :)

Answer 4

Any reference style book that is deemed good by your community is always worth reading at least once. It will do a few things for you, reinforce what you know, correct ideas that you think you know, and possibly teach you new things all together.

For this reason I generally suggest to every programmer that I know to get involved with doing technical reviews for the various book companies that have such openings. I generally do a lot of book reviews for Manning but have also done them for O'Riely too. I am sure you can get connected with Wrox, APress, etc.

The key here is several things. You get free books as they come out rather than when they are released to the book store. For me this means that you get to know about new technologies before others do (such as ASP.NET MVC, Hadoop, Lucene, etc....deep understandings in the cases where there are no previous books). You generally also get a free copy of the book once it is released. For those with egos (I don't know of any such programmers :P) you also get your name in the book. Lastly, some companies may pay you for your review efforts as well.

Answer 5

I've read (and owned!) two different revisions of this book. I haven't seen it in about four years, but some of the bits in it are absolute gems:

• The Inheritance chapter covers a variety of different reasons to use, and more importantly not to use inheritance. I've returned to that chapter several times, both out of nostalgia and for reference.
• The Tetris example is a really nice and simple worked example of an application in Java. A bit dated now, given that web applications are the order of the day, but it's a really useful explanation of Object-Oriented design.

In all, I found it a really good book to learn from, and to support one's learning over the first couple of years. I used it for teaching :) I think you're right that it's not a seasoned programmer's work, but for what it does, it's pretty excellent.