The first chapter, Great Software Begins Here, talks about the three steps to design not only software that works, but quality software. These steps are:
- Make sure your software does what the customer wants it to do.
- Apply basic OO (object-oriented) principles to add flexibility.
- Strive for a maintainable design.
McLaughlin B. , Pollice G., West D. (2006). Chapter 1 Well-Designed Apps Rock: Great Software Begins Here. On Head First Object-Oriented Analysis and Design: A Brain Friendly Guide to OO&A (640). O’Reilly Media.
Also, this chapter uses Rick’s Guitar Shop Case to explain these steps in a practical way.
I really liked the way this book is presenting things. They (the authors) use a lot of graphics and different ways to explain the same thing. This chapter was all about practice, they gave me an example of an app with it’s requirements and asked me to make it better. I think it is really important for us (learners) that they are helping us in each step of the way, in order to achieve what they ask us to do. The section “There are no dumb questions” really get you out of confusion in some topics. The part that I liked more is that the whole process of “writing great software” is presented in a way that is very easy to comprehend.
What I didn’t like was that they used terms to explain some things, before explaining what those terms mean. For example, in the activity where I was supposed to match the terms with their corresponding text, I hadn’t read any definition of “flexibility” and “design patterns”. Later, they defined it, but i don’t understand why they didn’t defined them before.
Overall, I enjoyed a lot of this chapter, specially how they are presenting most of the stuff. It is an easy and fun way to learn a lot of the concepts behind OOA&D.
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