Re: Timeless Classics of Software Engineering

In article <d1a33011.0409220346.6b44c8d8_at_posting.google.com>, apm <apm35_at_student.open.ac.uk> wrote:
>Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn_at_garlic.com> wrote in message news:<u1xhstjld.fsf@mail.comcast.net>...
>> > The other essential on my book case is Lakos' "Large Scale C++
>> > Software Design". It's applicable to any language and has enough
>> > rationale that's grounded in real development practices and the
>> > problems of large scale projects that I think it's relevant to the
>> > original topic.
>
>I am suprised you say it's applicable to any language. The advice
>about cyclic dependencies certainly is but I find much of the advice
>is specific to C++, such as #includes, use of fwd class decls etc. But
>that's ok coz it is supposed to be for C++ developers.
>
>IMO it is a classic but the evolution of C++ has caused it to become
>somewhat dated. That is why I give it a qualified recommendation. The
>main ideas are certainly important and AFAIK are not covered by any
>other text. And there is some pioneering work, such as metrics and
>notation for physical dependencies. However, at the time of writing
>(circa 1997), many commercial C++ compilers on Unix were quite limited
>in what they supported and this is what makes me say the book is
>dated. The compiler limitations made certain language features
>off-limits in the interests of portability. Features such as heavy
>template use (e.g meta-programming) and namespaces were of very
>limited availability. So the way these features are handled would
>probably not be in line with current usage. For more information on
>this, see the comments made in passing on the ACCU web site
>(http://www.accu.org/htdig/search.htm).

While in a discussion with John over the summer, he said a second edition of the book was being worked on. There is an off chance that I misunderstood and has was referring to something else.

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