Object-Oriented Analysis and Design with Applications
Grady Booch (1993)

Book review by Ted Felix

I read this one in 1995, and found it quite useful in clearing up my thinking about object oriented design. It also helped me land a job at the time as it defines the "Booch notation" that was common before the UML. Most interviewers in 1995 wanted you to be able to draw and decipher Booch diagrams before they would hire you. The examples in this book were rather limited, and probably led me toward my mistaken belief that one had to model the real world exclusively to be object-oriented. I probably should read this one again to form a more current opinion of it. As it stands, I cannot recommend it. I recommend reading Larman's Applying UML and Patterns instead.

Object-Oriented Modeling and Design (Rumbaugh 1991) may have been a much better book, and I should have read it instead. Rumbaugh updated his book in 2005: Object-Oriented Modeling and Design with UML (Blaha/Rumbaugh 2005). Object Oriented Software Engineering (Ivar Jacobson 1992) may have been an even better choice at the time. I'm not sure why I didn't pursue it. I think it was because everyone called it the "use case" book, and that seemed like a pretty simple concept.

Third Edition

A third edition is now available, however, I seriously doubt that Booch can outdo Larman. I might give it a skim at some point.

I think that Larman's Applying UML and Patterns makes it unnecessary for any of the classic OO books to be updated.

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