Applying UML and Patterns : An Introduction to Object-Oriented Analysis and Design Book

Right on the cover, Martin Fowler says Larman's book is his unreserved recommendation for learning OOD. Circa 2006-2010, that's an incredibly huge endorsement and says more than any amateur review could.

This is a big, college-text-style book. It's dense. I've read it twice through, and that was probably a mistake because it feels like I've failed to really soak it all up. Hence it's back on my to-read list. It might better use the book more as a school text - read a couple chapters, consciously apply that material at work, repeat.

As for content - this is pretty good stuff. If you're trying to learn OOA&D, it feels like what you would have gotten out of a competent and pertinent full-year college course in OO and software engineering. (Yes, it covers much more than "just" OO.) As with many college courses (at least in software), it's thorough, it's "canon", but is ultimately only a start.

Another way I look at the content of this book is in this comparison: Imagine graduating from a college with a basic, vanilla, no-frills CS degree and landing a development job at a non-software company that doesn't have much software practice. You are asked to put together programs to solve problems as you see fit. You grow in areas dependent on your environment and initiative but most likely on happenstance. Constrast with landing a job at a company that has its act together with a mature development environment, effective practices and structure, etc. People are indoctrinated into "the way" (i.e., methods, habits, artifacts, PATTERNS, etc.) You grow in a guided path along what has worked here, and would probably be useful elsewhere as well.

Larman's book helps you move from the former to the latter, as if you'd worked for LarmanCo.