Grady Booch Quotes

29 Sourced Quotes

In object-oriented analysis, we seek to model the world by identifying the classes and objects that form the vocabulary of the problem domain, and in object-oriented design, we invent the abstractions and mechanisms that provide the behavior that this model requires.

Grady Booch
Typically, a subclass augments or redefines the existing structure and behavior of its superclasses.

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The object-oriented paradigm is useful when building software systems where there is a hierarchy defined as a ranking or ordering of abstractions.

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Object-oriented design is a method of design encompassing the process of object-oriented decomposition and a notation for depicting both logical and physical as well as static and dynamic models of the system under design.

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If an abstraction is a kind of some other abstraction, or if it is exactly equal to the sum of its components, then inheritance is a better approach

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As Cox points out, "Without inheritance, every class would be a free-standing unit, each developed from the ground up. Different classes would bear no relationship with one another, since the developer of each provides methods in whatever manner he Chooses. Any consistency across classes is the result of discipline on the part of the programmers. Inheritance makes it possible to define new software in the Same way we introduce any concept to a newcomer, by comparing it with something that is already familiar."

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Whereas object-oriented analysis typically focuses upon one specific problem at a time, domain analysis seeks to identify the classes and objects that are common to all applications within a given domain, such as missile avionics systems, compilers, or accounting software.

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Philosophy and cognitive science have contributed to the advancement of the object model. The idea that the world could be viewed either in terms of objects or processes was a Greek innovation, and in the seventeenth century, we find Descartes observing that humans naturally apply an object-oriented view of the world. In the twentieth century, Rand expanded upon these themes in her philosophy of objectivist epistemology. More recently, Minsky has proposed a model of human intelligence in which he considers the mind to be organized as a society of otherwise mindless agents. Minsky argues that only through the cooperative behavior of these agents do we find what we call intelligence.

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The amateur software engineer is always in search of magic, some sensational method or tool whose application promises to render software development trivial. It is the mark of the professional software engineer to know that no such panacea exist.

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Object-oriented analysis is a method of analysis that examines requirements from the perspective of the classes and objects found in the vocabulary of the problem domain.

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The entire history of software engineering is that of the rise in levels of abstraction.

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Perhaps the greatest strength of an object-oriented approach to development is that it offers a mechanism that captures a model of the real world.

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In the early days of modern computing - the 40s, 50s and 60s - computing was a priesthood. Only a few were allowed to commune directly with the machine; all others would give their punched card offerings to the anointed, who would in turn genuflect before their card readers and perform their rituals amid the flashing of lights, the clicking of relays, and the whirring of fans and motors. If the offering was well-received, the anointed would call the communicants forward and in solemn silence hand them printed manuscripts, whose signs and symbols would be studied with fevered brow.

Grady Booch
Good people with a good process will outperform good people with no process every time.

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… I pounded the doors at the local IBM sales office until a salesman took pity on me. After we chatted for a while, he handed me a Fortran [manual]. I'm sure he gave it to me thinking, "I'll never hear from this kid again." I returned the following week saying, "This is really cool. I've read the whole thing and have written a small program. Where can I find a computer?" The fellow, to my delight, found me programming time on an IBM 1130 on weekends and late-evening hours. That was my first programming experience, and I must thank that anonymous IBM salesman for launching my career. Thank you, IBM.

Grady Booch
Structured design does not scale up well for extremely complex systems, and this method is largely inappropriate for use with object-based and object-oriented programming languages.

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[A class category is] a collection of classes, some of which are visible to other class categories, and others of which are hidden.

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The task of the software development team is to engineer the illusion of simplicity.

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In a quality object-oriented software system, you will find many classes that speak the language of the domain expert

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Ultimately, discovery and invention are both problems of classification, and classification is fundamentally a problem of finding sameness. When we classify, we seek to group things that have a common structure or exhibit a common behavior.

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An operation is some action one object performs upon another in order to elicit a reaction.

Grady Booch
Every software system needs to have a simple yet powerful organizational philosophy (think of it as the software equivalent of a sound bite that describes the system's architecture)... [A] step in [the] development process is to articulate this architectural framework, so that we might have a stable foundation upon which to evolve the system's function points.

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A class is a set of objects that share a common structure and a common behavior

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The function of good software is to make the complex appear to be simple.

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C++ also supports the notion of friends: cooperative classes that are permitted to see each other's private parts.

Grady Booch