How to Use Objects ─ Code and Concepts

Today, most developers use object-oriented languages. However, objects offers far more power than typical developers ever access: power that's only accessible to those with a deep understanding of the object paradigm.

How to Use Objects provides that understanding. Advanced software engineering researcher Holger Gast weaves together insights and best practices drawn from object-oriented design, the design patterns movement, agile programming, the Java IDE and GUI APIs, and beyond.

How to Use Objects is organized around three fundamental principles. Contracts of methods lead to a discussion of interfaces, specifications, and correctness. The concept of events leads to an understanding of objects as reactive entities, introducing insights that lie at the heart of all frameworks. Finally, responsibility-driven design perceives applications as networks of collaborating objects, illuminating crucial concepts of design and architecture.

For each set of ideas, Gast drills down from high-level concepts to resulting source code. Rather than identifying "one correct universal approach," he systematically presents several complementary views, shows how they are employed in current software, and helps programmers draw upon the best features in each. Along the way, he illuminates issues ranging from data binding to messaging, factories to finite state machines.

Gast then demonstrates the use of objects in context by discussing the design and usage of key elements of the Eclipse application platform. Throughout, he discusses relevant patterns, refactorings, design and implementation decisions, and Eclipse tool support.

Accessible, logical, pragmatic, and detailed, How to Use Objects will make you far more effective -- whether you're mastering your first object language or you've been working with objects for decades.

Holger Gast graduated in computer science from the University of Tubingen, Germany, in 2000, and received a Ph.D. with a dissertation on type systems for programming languages in 2005 (Tubingen). As a post-doctoral fellow, he worked on formal correctness proofs for software and finished his Habilitation for Computer Science in 2012 (Tubingen).

Since 2000, he has being teaching in the area of software engineering at different levels of the computer science curriculum, starting from introductory programming courses to lectures on software design and architecture. His other interests include scientific databases for the humanities and the model-driven construction of data-driven web applications.