"Charles Hottel" <chottel@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:htCdncue2-CYRp3VnZ2dnUVZ_sSlnZ2d@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> "William M. Klein" <wmklein@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
> news:a5VLj.174423$uN4.76665@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>> Joe,
>> although it is medium old, I would suggest looking at/for:
>>
>> "Object Orientation for Cobol Programming"
>>
>> by Ray Obin. See:
>>
http://www.bookfinder4u.com/IsbnSearch.aspx?isbn=1569280053&mode=direct
>>
>> I couldn't find where to buy new copies, but you might want to check
with
>> Micro Focus to see if they have "old" copies for sale.
>>
>> This book uses "traditional" COBOL thinking to explain OO concepts.
>>
>>
>> --
>> Bill Klein
>> wmklein <at> ix.netcom.com
>
> This book is one of only two Cobol based books that I found helpful.
> However it was not enough for me. In particular I found the Factory
> concept not well explained. Also seeing how to do "OO concepts" using
> non-OO COBOL tends to reinforce the idea that OO is not really anything
> new or different and I do not think that is helpful. It doesn't give
you
> the feel for a language that has OO constructs built in and it doesn't
> give you a feell for the patterns of use of those constructs.
>
> The other book was Wilson Price's "Elements of Object Oriented COBOL".
> While good on the whole I think students will come away thinking that OO
> is way too wordy and cumbersome. This is not really a fault of the book
> but has more to do with how OO is implemented in COBOL.
>
> However I personally understood both of these much better after learning
> Java. C# would also be good, but I would stay away from C++ in the
> beginning. I have had good experiences with books from Mike Murach.
His
> books usually have a lot of examples showing typical business
application
> examples:
>
> http://www.murach.com/books/java.htm
>
> http://www.murach.com/books/cs08/index.htm
>
> A lot of books introduce the concepts of inheritance, interfaces and
> composition so that you come away with some general understanding of
them,
> but the examples are such that you really don't have a feel for what to
> use when and the various tradeoffs with each.
>
> The books "Head First Java" and "Head First Design Patterns" are very
good
> (be sure to get the latest versions). The latter might be too advanced
> for beginners but you might be able to use some of the animal examples
(or
> others) from it. It has some simple animal based examples based on
flying
> and quacking ducks and how to make/adapt a turkey to look like a duck
etc.
> I really enjoyed learning the examples in this book but get the errata
and
> chapter 9 on iterator and composite patterns contains some buggy code.
> What I really liked was how they took an initial example and kept
> improving it using the OO design principles being introduced. Also it
> showed interfaces, inheritance and composition and when to prefer or
> choose on over the other. Mnay books say "favor composition over
> inheritance" but they don't give concrete examples that allow you to see
> why. This one does. I guess it sonewhat of a what comes first the
chicke
> or the egg problem. You need some knowledge of OO concepts to understand
> OO design patterns but for me I needed OO design patterns to appreciate
> how the concepts are used and to see some of their power.
>
> Many people insist that it is better to learn OO design first and this
> might be a more language neutral approach. I don't know as I did not
take
> that approach and I personally sometimes have trouble understanding
> exactly what is meant without seeing a concrete example.
This is a very helpful review, Charlie.
I'm going to try and get this book.
Pete.
--
"I used to write COBOL...now I can do anything."
>
|
