Rating: 
Summary: An Explanation of OOP that is both Broad and Deep
Review: This is a comprehensive explanation of Object Oriented Programming principles. It is complete in breadth, thorough in depth, well-organized and well-written. It requires discipline on the part of the reader to stick with it for 1000+ pages, but it is not such a chore as it first may seem and the payoff is worth the effort. No programmer would regret this read.Other reviewers have mentioned that Meyer was unable to separate OO principles from the Eiffel language used as the book's notation. I disagree with that analysis, though perhaps he went further into describing the notation than was necessary to make the basic point in a few instances. As a reader, I was never left in confusion about which points were conceptual and which were notational. I also appreciate the fact that this book was NOT written using a more popular language. The above criticism would have been more true but less noticed if he had. A more familiar langauge would have distracted readers from the real topic. It is useful to learn about priciples that are not directly supported in C++ or Java. Such a presentation helps you more effectively apply the features of the language that you are using and the other features can often be simulated when it seems useful to do so.
Rating: 
Summary: Good technical introduction, but too preachy
Review: This is a good book about the internal workings and design of object orientation. Chapters 8 and 9 are some of the best writings about the "guts" of objects available anywhere. However, Meyer's talk about the alleged superiority of OOP over procedural and RDBMS techniques did not feel quite right; but at first I could not quite put my finger on exactly why. After sharing sections and examples with some colleagues and e-groups, it seems that Meyer did indeed exaggerate or misrepresent some of the comparisons. The story on case statements, top-down design, relational "joins," and others are not quite the paradigm victory that Meyer paints. Often he neglects to mention the other side of the coin with regard to the myriad tradeoffs of picking one approach over another. Such exclusions of the downsides are more reminiscent of marketing departments than of worthy academics. One prominent example is the false dichotomy given between pure top-down procedural design and OO design. Others and I have built many applications without tying routines and modules to a strict sequence. They can be as time-independent as you wish to make them. Extreme top-down indeed has its problems, but it is not the only procedural game in town. If anything, it underscores the risks of taking ANY design philosophy too far. An otherwise good book is hampered by a disappointing lopsided promotional attitude.
Rating:
Summary: a MUST for software people
Review: This is a very well written book about fundamentals of OOP. Worths 10x the money and the effort of reading (1300 pages !) and should be read by anyone who is involved with software development / maintenance.
Rating:
Summary: A Great Book
Review: This is by far the best programming book I have ever read, hands down. Not only is it clearly written, it also presents the best group of ideas concerning OOP I have ever seen. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: One of the best...
Review: This is one of the few books that really push beyond the bounds of ordinary books on software. A lot of those are just trying to explain you some well-known concepts, whether it is OO, a programming language or an IDE. This book also tries to explain te concepts of OO and programming, but it starts from ground up and explains every little thing while designing an OO-language. And if he happens to come up with a language called Eiffel (a language he designed) then it must mean that Eiffel is a pretty good language, because it is hard (if not impossible) to refute his explanation. This book really is on of the best together with Design Patterns and Effective C++. And either this book or Eiffel, the Language should be your introduction to OO-programming.
Rating:
Summary: This is perhaps the most complete and objective coverage ...
Review: This is perhaps the most complete and objective coverage of the priciples of Object Oriented Software development. Although, the notation used in the book may not look extremely relevant, but the book certainly explains great concepts in a very clear manner.
Rating:
Summary: The best OO book ever!
Review: This is the best OO book I've ever seen. Before reading this book my favorite language was C++. After reading this book Eiffel became my favorite. This book transformed me to become an Eiffelist and pushed me to a new height of OO knowledge and practice. No other OO authors, language designers dare to touch the full potential of multiple inheritance and some downplay its role just to hide their inability to resolve the implementation issues associated with it. Eiffel uses a simple (and very elegant) feature renaming mechanism to resolve name clashes, feature sharing and replication mechanism for repeated inheritance. This book and Eiffel open up the path to utilize full potential of multiple inheritance. Thanks to Bertrand! The book also fully explains about the Design-by-Contract mechanism which safeguards your features and classes by using precondition, postcondition and invariant clauses. The Design-by-Contract mechanism is very useful and very important invention for both specification of individual features and classes, and serving as a testing and debugging aid. Thanks to Bertrand again! The other topics include: automatic memory management and garbage collection, genericity (similar to C++ template, but much better), disciplined exception handling, dynamic binding, polymorphic data structures, ... ... the list goes on. This book offers not only theoretical foundation of OO but also practical hands-on knowledge with lots of comprehensive examples. This book is an indispensable guide to serious OO programmers and developers. No other book covers about OO as much and beautifully as this book does.
Rating:
Summary: Object-Oriented Software Construction, 2nd Edition
Review: This is the book that every designer need's to be carried.
Rating:
Summary: Probably the best book on OO
Review: Those who have red a fair amount of stuff on OO methodologies, languages and technologies will have learned that ... no such thing as a standard OO methodology or language or technology exists. Every books author, programming languages inventor or methodologies designer gives a different definition of even the most common concepts you'll find in every book or article. Thus, the best one can do is to read as much as he can, and try to build his personal view of what OO means and brings. The literature, after all, is full of references, it's up to each of us to find the time to read them.
In pursuing the objective to read the best available sources, this OOSC2 deserves a special mention. It has several qualities that put it aparts from the pool.
First, it's complete. I mean, it could be your first book on OO and you would be gently but rigorously introduced to all the concepts you "should" (in "my" view) learn.
Second, it teaches an OO programming language, i.e. Eiffel. And this is good both because learning a programming language will give you the concrete sensation of one important application of OO technologies, and because Eiffel has been invented by Dr. Meyer itself, so it's supposed that none can teach it better than him.
Third, in addition to OO technologies you'll learn another product of Dr. Meyer's mind: Design by Contract. I know, this is finely interwined with both OO techno and Eiffel that it doesn't seems "really added", but part of them. True, but you would have to buy another separate book (by Dr. Meyer itself) should you ever been interested only on it. This said, from this book you'll gain a solid introduction and very likely a thourough understanding of OO technologies and of one widely famous OO programming language. That is: a good investment, both for your wallet and your time.
Rating: 
Summary: A must have book for professionals in OO
Review: Unfortunately, the majority of books in computing science area suffers a lack of
precise definition and clarity of terms and concepts. In my personal opinion, the
commercial aspects that strongly affect this area, comparing to other technological
ones, contributes to open the computing book market for authors of highly questionable
experience and a quite shalow knowledge about the matter they're treating. For example, it
is not unusual to see the same author (or group of authors) writing books about Java, .NET,
JSP, ASP, Perl, OO, C/C++ and so on.
Bertrand Meyer's OO book is an exception in this tendency. The subjects treated are logically
distributed and the concepts are clearly and precisely defined. Then, the reader gets an
intuitive and deep understanding of OO theoretical aspects, independent of OO language
specifics. All the concepts are perfectly prioritized and sequenced: software quality before
OO, ADT before classes, features before functions, DBC before exception handling. Every
single concept bases the following ones. I must say, however, that the author should be more
concise: he writes too much to explain a single concept. He reveals his large academic
literate background inserting unnecessary large comments in the text. The book could have
a quite less number of pages without any loss in learning the main concepts.
I sincerely do not see any problem about the relation between the OO concepts presented and
their practical implementation: EIFFEL language. At least, the author shows concretely that
the concepts treated in the book are implementable. If there were not any language to
complete and support the theoretical aspects, we could say : "Ok, all the concepts
in the book are perfect and beautiful, but the closest programming language to
these concepts we can use is JAVA, for example."
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