Rating: 
Summary: The best OO book!
Review: No amount of praise would do justice to the wisdom contained in this book. Rather than wasting time reading over-hyped design patterns and OO books, do yourself a favor and get this book. Unlike the current crop of OO gurus who seem to muddy the simple concept of OO with very abstract, verbose and inflated terminology, Arthur Riel does a great job of explaining abstract concepts in simple, practical terms. Not many people can explain the way Arthur Riel does. Great OO book! Excellent style!
Rating:
Summary: Excellent, practical guide to making OO design decisions
Review: Object Oriented programming gives the developer a great many choices when designing. This book describes 68 heuristics that help you make optimal design decisions at every step of the way. The explanations are easy to understand and the focus on practical design considerations rather than theory make this book very easy to get through. If it's your job to do OO designs then this book is a must! It does the same thing for OO that Scott Meyer's excellent "Effective C++" books do for C++. The recent popularity of "Design Pattern" books should not distract you from books like this - buy this one first!
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Summary: One of the best reading for OO programmer never seen
Review: Thanks Arthur for this interesting and valuable book.
I have some years of experience in OOAD&P and the book taught me some new principles yet.
Good document for newcomers and professional designers/programmers.
Xav
Rating:
Summary: Facinating, Well written, and to the point.
Review: The author doesnt waste words. He explains all his points well, with good examples, and is always to the point. You have to read the book carefully, and not just skim it, because while its short, its compact with a lot of great information conveyed in just a few paragraphs. He covered almost every OO subject I could think of, and in depth.The book is outstanding and I couldn't put it down. (How many heavy tech books can you say that about?) If you are new to OO programming and starting with Java I'd start with Beginning Java Objects. Then after a little experience I read this one. Don't read it too early in your career because a lot of it will just wash over you. It will be more beneficial if you have some experience before reading. You will learn and retain more. But its not a hard book to read, its very accessaible. The author is talented.
Rating:
Summary: A good, readable and practical book on OO design
Review: The great strength of this book is that it specifically addresses design issues that crop up all the time, and handles them in a readable and practical way. For example: should an inheritance hierarchy be wide or deep? Should design be data-driven or behavior-driven? In all cases the author steers a reasonable course, explains the tradeoffs, and avoids dogma. I also enjoyed the fact that I didn't have to wade through lots of code to get the point. Too many authors think that a code example explains itself. The heuristics are a nice touch, although I consider them to be the frosting on this particular cake. This book's a keeper.
Rating:
Summary: Best O-O book you will read
Review: This book is absolutely required reading for anyone who wants to make effective use of O-O...nuff said!
Rating:
Summary: Recommended book for anyone serious about OO design
Review: This is one of the best object oriented design books I have read. Traditional object oriented analysis and design books mainly focus on methodologies which can become very academic and perhaps boring to read. This book is different, it focus on design heuristics and gives practical tips on how to apply them. Most of the design heuristics in the book are well explained and the author did a good job in explaining the reasons behind these heuristics. There are codes given in the book to illustrate some of the concepts but I would like to see more of these codes in future.
Rating: 
Summary: Very nice and pragmatic guidelines
Review: While the approach is a bit different from the "design patterns" book, this book gave me a very useful set of concrete guidelines for dealing with design issues I face every day in my work. Definitely recommend it to any OO designer. My only caveat would be to start with a already clear separation of "interface" from "class", as the book does not emphasize this.
Rating:
Summary: this is a really good book...
Review: Wow. I wasn't expecting such an easy yet informative read. About 50 pages through this book, I wanted to hunt down the author's e-mail address and send him a personal thank-you letter. If you're experienced with language-specifics, and ready to get a grasp on the better ways to implement your designs so that they are more maintainable and logical, then grab this text. Riel explains things in a clear way, but the best thing about this book is that it follows the thought patterns of a typical reader. It's not pretentiously high-minded and verbose. Riel explains problems in common language, offers the common solutions, and then tells you in many ways how they can be improved. He covers "god-classes", encapsulation vs. inheritence, message passing, and much more. Overall, this book is a very mind-opening experience, and I'd recommend it to anyone.
Rating:
Summary: Outstanding!!
Review: You must need it when you finish(!) your design
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