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.