Preface

My experience has been that object-oriented design is best learned from using it to actually build systems. The style guidelines and design rules in Taligentxd5 s Guide to Designing Programs come from years of that kind of experience, building large object-oriented C++ systems in the Taligent" environment. If you plan to develop for Taligent environments, this book will provide you with an understanding of the philosophy underlying Taligent's designs, and the way in which to fit your own work into Taligent's environments. If your interest is simply in object-oriented design and C++, then my hope is that this book will benefit you by showing the experiences of one company.

This book grew from an internal style guide I wrote, which Taligent uses to develop its products, to train engineers, and to orient Taligent early developers to the Taligent system. These guidelines, like most, are based partly on empirical heuristics, and partly on principles. Although the focus has always been specifically on the writing of Taligent software, much of what we have learned is applicable not only to Taligent, but to any C++ system.

It is important for Taligent to have a consistent style of design across the many components that make up our systems, but you may find a different style that works well for you. We are interested in hearing about your experiences--if you have comments, please send them to Internet: Taligent_DTS@Taligent.com or CompuServe: 766711,1260.

This book assumes that you have a working knowledge of C++ and of
object-oriented design. If you are just starting out on either, you will find several useful introductory books listed in the Bibliography.