[MUD-Dev] Re: Analysis and specification - the dirty words of mud development?

[Niklas Elmqvist]

On Sun, 14 Jun 1998, Andrew C.M. McClintock wrote:

> I for one am interested, but not at all knowledgeable about the subject;
> can anyone recommend any good books on the topic, or any other form of
> information?

I am an avid reader of object-oriented analysis and design books (more
often than not, the concepts of "analysis" and "design" seem to go
hand-in-hand with O-O), and can therefore recommend some good books in
this field.

IMHO, one of the best authorities on a&d in the field is Grady Booch --
read about the Booch method in "Object-Oriented Analysis and Design with
Applications". The other main competitors are James Rumbaugh with his
"Object Modelling Technique" (the method is called OMT) and Ivar
Jacobsen's "Use-Case Approach" (not the real title, it's slipped my mind,
but the method is called Objectory). Recently these three heavy-weights
joined ranks and produced the UML notation, or the Unified Modelling
Language notation (ironically, the three were not able to come to terms
with each other about a modelling method, only a notation) -- I am sure
that there are some good books about UML by now.

Another must-buy for O-O design zealots is "Design Patterns : Elements of
Reusable Object-Oriented Software" written by Gamma, Vlissides, Johnson
and Helm (incidentially, these four are called Gang of Four or GoF for
short). This is a comprehensive catalog of extremely useful design
techniques (or "patterns" as the authors call them) for common problems
when writing O-O software.

> Andrew C.M. McClintock
> andrew at moonstar.com    andrewm at mail.hsc.edu

-- Niklas Elmqvist (d97elm at dtek.chalmers.se) ----------------------
  "A Thaum is the basic unit of magical strength. It has been 
   universally established as the amount of magic needed to create 
   one small white pigeon or three normal sized billiard balls."
		-- Terry Pratchett, The Color of Magic