Rating: 
Summary: The absolute very best OO book available.
Review: I've already got 8 books on OO from all the famous guys (Booch, Rumbaugh, Jacobson, etc...) but this new book is much more comprehensive. No one can argue that this is the most encyclopedic reference on OO to date. It's also the most expensive OO book but look at it this way: if you get this book, you won't have to BUY all the other 8 books!!! You'll actually save money and get better information. How can you beat that?
Rating:
Summary: This work will make the Dow Jones Index double!
Review: If I had Mr. Meyers' address, I'd send him a $1000 tip for this stellar work. I am the president of a software development firm and its most senior engineer. I am in the rare position of being able to intensely study and implement the technology presented in this book in a near pure form -- not using Eiffel, but using Microsoft Visual FoxPro. (It can be applied to any language which supports an object-oriented approach.) After doing most of the excercises in chapter 6 (and it DOES take doing the exercises to REALLY get it) it has dawned on me that if enough people take the time to really understand this technology in its pure form, a new day will dawn in the software industry. I'm not exaggerating. My teammates are now learning this technology with emphasis on correct and pure application. I have no doubts that my company is going to be one of the first to fully implement it. And I see nothing but blue sky. This book is worth 10X its price and surely, surely ranks up there with the Knuth texts in import and function for the software industry. (The Knuth texts laid the foundation for a large portion of the software industry.) I also think it will go down in history as the "turning point that enabled the software industry technologies to finally catch up with their intensly workable hardware counterparts". My advice to software developers endeavoring to improve their efficiency with this book is: 1) don't go past any words or symbols that you don't fully understand, 2) actually DO the exercises, 3) be patient with the sometimes verbose explanations, and 4) realize that the technology contained in this book is a goldmine and don't treat it any other way.
Rating:
Summary: The Software Construction Reference
Review: If one were to read only one book on software construction, this would have to be it. It covers all the essential areas with a logic that is difficult to refute and a clarity and style which make it a pleasure to read. If you have read the previous edition buy this one. The first edition was excellent, but this one is much better written and covers an amazing amount of new material. Every software practioner, regardless of their experience and expertise, should read it.
Rating:
Summary: technical writing at its best
Review: If you ever plan to write a technical book, read this one to see how it should be done. Even though it tackles difficult ideas it is delightfully clear and terse. It is a bit abstract, and does its examples in Eiffel, so you probably want some practical Java or C++ experience before you savour this book. The author has some well-reasoned strong opinions on just about everything which adds a little zing to a dry subject.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent - Meyer is a great teacher
Review: If you've been developping in C/Cobol... and you want to understand what's the big deal about OO, then this is the book. The subjects are introduced wisely, and the chapters are clear. Moreover, it is fascinating to read. This is the closest to a thriller a computer book might get.
Rating: 
Summary: very good, but not the holy grail of software engineering
Review: In this book Bertrand Meyer did an excelllent job in explaining object oriented software design in a rigourous way. Too often authors of OO books were not formal and rigorous enough, leading to a lot of confusion in the OO world. This book gives a very formal and exact treatment of Object orienteation. As a consequence this book is a must read for every OO expert. That the book focusses on eiffel should not be seen as a drawback : you can apply most of the explained techniques in other OO languages.
Also this book does not focus much on UML. However, to my opinion, this is not a drawback neither since the power of UML is strongly overhyped.Though there are some minor drawbacks in this book :
-the book can be reduced to half of its size without sacrifying rigour and clearity. Some topics are not needed.
-design patterns are missing in this book.
-does not explain enough about unit testing. While the book gives very good explanation on design by contract, design by contract should be seen as an addition to unit testing, but it cannot replace it !!! Finally some remarks : please do not overestimate the power of software reuse : in reality it has limited usage since in order to create reusable software and reuse it, each teammember has to know quite well what the other teams are doing in order to reuse some part of their work. In reality, for big projects, this is often impractical.
-Design by contract is an important software technique, but you can also use it (apart from some limitations) in Java the assert statement. Of course eiffel is probabaly the best designed programming language. But that does not make it the best choice for building complex applications!! I am convinced that Java , in combination with the techniques describbed in this book, with unit testing frameworks like Junit, with aspect oriented programming facilities, and with usage of design patterns can beat eiffel as a development environment for building mission critical applications.
Rating:
Summary: Good stuff
Review: It is rare to find a technical book which is both informative and amusing. Some of Meyer's quotes (i.e., "I deleted all the semicolons [...] in one night of pure debauchery") are classic. I found the section on resolving object version conflicts especially thought-provoking. This is one of those few books which I bought with my own money.
Rating:
Summary: Authoritative, complete, readable, definitive book on OO
Review: Meyer is one of the best writers on object-orienter technologies, and this book is his best effort. As a C++ programmer, I gained significant insight into many OO topics that I would otherwise have not recoginized, much less understood, if not for this book. I had the privalege of meeting Prof. Meyer before buying this book, and it made it even more enjoyable--the book very accurately conveys this man's personality and general outlook. I recommend it to anyone who wants to understand thoroughly OO technologies. [It almost makes me want to go out and buy an Eiffel compiler! :-) ]
Rating: 
Summary: Stimulating think on object-orientated software construction
Review: Provides one with clear view on how to actually write good object-oriented software, as well as the limitations of some programming languages. Unfortunately it describes and introduces the Eiffel language. It should instead suggest ways to improve the programming languages discussed eg. C++. Who wants to learn a new language when there is C++.
Rating:
Summary: A definitive guide to object oriented programming and design
Review: So many books on object oriented programming and
design are written in a textbook fashion that make
them difficult to read and challenging to apply.
Meyer has not only managed to create a book that
covers virtually every aspect of the field; he has
done so in a way that is very readable and that puts everything into context in addition to going
into specific details. Highly recommended.
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