How This Book Is Organized


Readers are encouraged to proceed through the book in sequence, to accept that each chapter lays a foundation for the one that follows . Overlaying the order are several implicit logical divisions, including the following:

  • The introduction and Chapter 1, Object Thinking, advance arguments for why understanding the background and history of ideas is a necessary step in the successful application of those ideas. They also argue that both objects and extreme programming (agile methods ) share common foundations.

  • Chapter 2, Philosophical Context, and Chapter 3, From Philosophy to Culture, provide a foundational context, partly based in philosophy and partly in history.

  • Chapter 4, Metaphor: Bridge to the Unfamiliar, introduces key ideas and meta-ideas (metaphors as ideas about how to explain ideas, simply put).

  • Chapter 5, Vocabulary: Words to Think With, introduces vocabulary and explains why object thinking requires a different vocabulary for things that appear to be familiar but that use old labels.

  • Chapter 6, Method, Process, and Models, revisits commonalities between object and agile ideas and the relationship of those ideas to the notion of method and process.

  • Chapter 7, Discovery, Chapter 8, Thinking Toward Design, and Chapter 9, All the World s a Stage, apply the ideas of previous chapters and provide examples of object thinking in action.

  • Chapter 10, Wrapping Up, adds a coda with short explorations of how object thinking can be extended and coordinated with unavoidable nonobject worlds , and what the ultimate outcome of object thinking might be.

I encourage you to engage the book in the order presented, but feel free to skip Chapter 1 if you re prepared to take on faith the assertions made about objects and object thinking in subsequent chapters.

Many readers will be a bit anxious to get to the good stuff, to see how the book s ideas are applied or how they manifest themselves in practice (which is shown in Chapters 7 through 9). While I firmly believe that the book s initial chapters ”as far afield as they might appear to be ”need to be covered first, I also recognize the need to at least foreshadow application. To this end, I offer a continuing sidebar ”the Forward Thinking sidebar ”in these initial chapters. This sidebar presents a sample application in bits and pieces as a means of illustrating important ideas while satisfying the craving for pragmatic examples.




Microsoft Object Thinking
Object Thinking (DV-Microsoft Professional)
ISBN: 0735619654
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2004
Pages: 88
Authors: David West

flylib.com © 2008-2017.
If you may any questions please contact us: flylib@qtcs.net