1. So you want to learn Object-Oriented Programming?

Getting Started

• Get Rumbaugh’s OMT book: Object-Oriented Modeling and Design </LI>
  • See Rational’s <A HREF=”http://www.rational.com/“>Web Page</A> (http://www.rational.com/)
• Get Gamma’s Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software
• Get Java; <A HREF=”http://java.sun.com/“>java.sun.com</A>
• Java?

Why Java?

• Fabulous OO language
• Free for the download from Sun
• Will take over application development as the platform of choice

Java Features

• Simple
• Object-Oriented
• Robust
• Secure
• Interpreted
• Dynamic
• Portable
• Neutral
• Threads
• Garbage Collection
• Exceptions
• Performance

What about Visual Basic or PowerBuilder?

• Aren’t they Object-Oriented?
  • Barely
  • The issue is they are tightly coupled to their private GUI model
  • You couldn’t write a server
• They are incomplete as languages
  • You can’t have an abstract class unrelated to the GUI

What about C++?

• Messy
  • Preprocessor
  • Pointers and References
  • Destructors
  • Header vs. Body issue
  • Templates
  • No root class for all objects
• Usually Platform-specific
  • MS Visual C++ for MS-Windows
  • Symantec TCL for Macintosh
  • YACL for Unix