Re: [boost] Re: In-place construction for variant

From: Beman Dawes (bdawes_at_[hidden])
Date: 2003-11-04 19:52:58

At 01:55 PM 11/4/2003, E. Gladyshev wrote:
 >
 >--- Beman Dawes <bdawes_at_[hidden]> wrote:
 >[...]
 >>
 >> Yes. "Object-Oriented Software Construction" by Bertrand Meyer. ISBN:
 >> 0136291554
 >>
 >>
 >> Although the Eiffel language itself never had much market penetration,
 >this
 >> book had a tremendous influence on C++ and other programmer's thinking
 >> about invariants, preconditions, postconditions, and similar reasoning
 >> about objects and programs.
 >>
 >> --Beman
 >
 >Thanks, Beman!
 >Oh, this is the huge book. I've actually seen it
 >but ~1300 pages turned me off.
 >I'll have to get it and at least look through it anyway.

To tell the truth, I've only read the 1988 first edition (534 page).

Perhaps someone who has read the second edition could comment on where the 
extra 800 pages came from.

 >Is there a shorter version of the main concepts somewhere? :)

Good question, but I'm not aware of a shorter version. Looking at the table 
of contents, I see that what I found valuable was the 54 pages in chapter 
7, "Systematic approaches to software construction", which talks about the 
topics in this Boost discussion thread. Invariants, preconditions, 
postconditions, exceptions, errors, failures, etc.

So you might just try checking the book out of a library, if buying the 
whole thing strains your budget.

--Beman

--Beman