Object-Oriented Software Construction
Book by Bertrand Meyer
title: "Object-Oriented Software Construction" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["1988-non-fiction-books", "1997-non-fiction-books", "object-oriented-programming", "software-engineering-books", "prentice-hall-books"] description: "Book by Bertrand Meyer" topic_path: "technology/programming-languages" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-Oriented_Software_Construction" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0
::summary Book by Bertrand Meyer ::
::data[format=table title="Infobox book"]
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| name | Object-Oriented Software Construction |
| image | Oosc2-medium.jpg |
| author | Bertrand Meyer |
| subject | software object-oriented programming |
| publisher | Prentice Hall |
| release_date | 1988, 1997 |
| pages | 1254 + xxviii |
| isbn | 978-0136291558 |
| isbn_note | (1997 ed.) |
| dewey | 005.1/17 21 |
| congress | QA76.64 .M493 1997 |
| oclc | 36187052 |
| :: |
| name = Object-Oriented Software Construction | title_orig = | translator = | image = Oosc2-medium.jpg | caption = | author = Bertrand Meyer | illustrator = | cover_artist = | country = | language = | series = | subject = software object-oriented programming | genre = | publisher = Prentice Hall | release_date = 1988, 1997 | english_release_date = | media_type = | pages = 1254 + xxviii | isbn = 978-0136291558 | isbn_note = (1997 ed.) | dewey= 005.1/17 21 | congress= QA76.64 .M493 1997 | oclc= 36187052 | preceded_by = | followed_by =
Object-Oriented Software Construction, also called OOSC, is a book by Bertrand Meyer, widely considered a foundational text of object-oriented programming. The first edition was published in 1988; the second edition, extensively revised and expanded (more than 1300 pages), in 1997. Many translations are available including Dutch (first edition only), French (1+2), German (1), Italian (1), Japanese (1+2), Persian (1), Polish (2), Romanian (1), Russian (2), Serbian (2), and Spanish (2). The book has been cited thousands of times. , The Association for Computing Machinery's (ACM) Guide to Computing Literature counts 2,233 citations, for the second edition alone in computer science journals and technical books; Google Scholar lists 7,305 citations. , the book is number 35 in the list of all-time most cited works (books, articles, etc.) in computer science literature, with 1,260 citations. The book won a Jolt award in 1994. The second edition is available online free.
Unless otherwise indicated, descriptions below apply to the second edition.
Focus
The book presents object technology as an answer to major issues of software engineering, with a special emphasis on addressing the software quality factors of correctness, robustness, extendibility and reusability. It starts with an examination of the issues of software quality, then introduces abstract data types as the theoretical basis for object technology and proceeds with the main object-oriented techniques: classes, objects, genericity, inheritance, Design by Contract, concurrency, and persistence. It includes extensive discussions of methodological issues.
Table of contents
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Notation
The first edition of the book used the programming language Eiffel for the examples and served as a justification of the language design choices for Eiffel. The second edition also uses Eiffel as its notation, but in an effort to separate the notation from the concepts it does not name the language until the Epilogue, on page 1162, where Eiffel appears as the last word. A few months after publication of the second edition, a reader posted on Usenet his discovery that the book's 36 chapters alternatively start with the letters E, I, F, F, E, L, a pattern being repeated 6 times. Also, in the Appendix, titled "Epilogue, In Full Frankness Exposing the Language" (in first initials), the first letters of each paragraph spell the same pattern.
References
- {{cite book |last1=Meyer |first1=Bertrand |author1-link=Bertrand Meyer |year=1988 |title=Object-Oriented Software Construction |publisher=Prentice Hall |isbn=978-0-13-629049-0 |url=
- {{cite book |last1=Meyer |first1=Bertrand |author1-link=Bertrand Meyer |year=1997 |title=Object-Oriented Software Construction, second edition |publisher=Prentice Hall |isbn=978-0-13-629155-8 |url=https://archive.org/details/objectorientedso00meye_0 |url-access=registration
References
- Web search, August 2006
- . (2024). ["Object-oriented software construction (2nd ed.)"](https://dl.acm.org/doi/book/10.5555/261119#citings). *Prentice-Hall*.
- [http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/articles.html Citeseer], September 2006
- . (2001). ["Previous Winners: Books"](http://www.ddj.com/joltawards/prev_bks.htm).
- (1997). "Object-Oriented Software Construction". Prentice-Hall.
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