| James J. Gavan 2007-05-23, 9:55 pm |
| Charles Hottel wrote:
> "James J. Gavan" <jgavandeletethis@shaw.ca> wrote in message
> news:vX25i.211534$DE1.22871@pd7urf2no...
>
>
>
> Well the best one was "Object Orientation for COBOL Programming" by Ray
> Obin. It was good as far as it went but was pretty much an introduction.
>
> The worst was "Object Oriented Development in COBOL" by Topper.
>
> Somewhere in between was "Elements of Object Oriented COBOL" by Wilson
> Price. I remember finding a lot of erros such as code not matching examples
> etc. At one time I had a list of the errors but it has become irretrievably
> lost.
>
> I was always hampered by not having a compiler to experiment with.
>
>
Ray's book is the one I've recently been quoting from. I got it as soon
as I was aware of its availability, but other than historically, I
really didn't glean too much from the examples which were really just
illustrating isolated syntax - still to be fair, I think that was the
intent.
Our friend Andrew Topper - If not the worst, certainly the second worst
- the one I always think of when I talk about theoretical books with
graphs and tables - absolutely bloody useless.
Will Price book - never had the problems you are talking about, because
I was just reading the examples to get his ideas. (I already had
familiarity with Net Express, so what he was describing wasn't entirely
new). I could have used his stuff with Net Express but really didn't
need to. I enjoyed Will's book, as did others, Donald and Pete for two.
He illustrated so much, but as he went topic by topic you didn't
immediately get a handle on Design Patterns that you referred to; his
examples started with a Procedural program invoking other Programs which
were classes. Bear in mind the tutorial style. However, having asked
him, in the real world he would for preference code solely in OO COBOL
classes, with no use of Procedurals.
The book you  ly missed - Edmund Arranga/Frank Coyle. That's the very
first I read, even before Will. As well as describing the syntax it
finishes up with a coded in-house library application, and other than
the Procedural trigger program the application is all classes. Certainly
illustrates dividing the application up into logical units (classes) and
covers the ground about Design Patterns relative to accessing databases.
This is the book that really got me going, supplemented by an extension
of ideas in Will's book. (Arranga/Coyle - probably still available from
amazon as a second-hand).
Even looking at the Arranga/Coyle application, I agree, it is real tough
to get a handle on OO, the sequencing as it jumps(invokes) from one
class to another - without a compiler to animate/debug and follow
program flow. You've gone the Java route - but there's always that Net
Express Personal Edition which you could download.
Jimmy
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