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 | | Practical Guide to Structured Systems Design (2nd Edition) (Yourdon Press Computing Series) by Meilir Page-Jones ISBN-10: 9780136907695 ISBN-10: 0-13-690769-5 ISBN-13: 9780136907695 ISBN-13: 978-0-13-690769-5 Paperback 1988-05-14 Prentice Hall PTR Find Lowest Price |
Editorials | ||
Product Description This practical guide takes the theoretical concepts of structured design and makes them applicable to real-world software development. It also integrates the approach of structured analysis with that of structured design. The book also gives a brief outline of the tools of structured analysis and shows how these tools are an asset not only to the analyst, but also to the designer of a computer system. | ||
Reviews | ||
Better than 99% of modern OOAD books This book is 20+ years old, but is better than 99% of the current OOAD books. Every page is a gold-nugget of practical-real-world-wisdom that is still relevant today. The structured approach detail here is much more valuable and practical than OOAD. | ||
Every Programmer Should Own This Book After over 20 years of dealing with other people's programming messes, I can't think of a better book for programmers to learn how to write clear programs. The sections on coupling and cohesion, are fundamental to structured design as well as object-oriented design. If my comments aren't persuasive then consider those of structured design's creator, Larry Constantine, who said Meilir's book on this topic is better than his. | ||
Very good book I actually handed out several copies in the early 1990s to co-workers. I first got introduced to this book when it was used as a textbook at NJIT on the undergraduate level. And really, I think in many ways, I think I liked it better. It was considerably more compact. And I think I liked the older terminology better. But good luck finding a copy. | ||
Fun to read but overrated The Structured Systems Design is a well-established methodology in software design which does not have a comparable counterpart in the OOP world. *** This book of Meilir Page-Jones attempts to bring a rigorous presentation of structured design as well as a down-to-earth methodology suitable for direct use. The book fails to deliver at high level on both counts. A) As a theoretical presentation of the methodology, even the author admits that the classic in the field is the book by Yourdon and Constantine. Perhaps without this remark the reader can easily see that the rigor and sobriety usually abundant in such works is slim in this book. For a practical guide, however, the level of rigor is not out of line. B) As a pratical guide, the book extensively explains *WHAT*, but it fails to teach *HOW*. For instance, the book spends a great deal in explaining what a good design is (a whole section of the book). But when it comes to how to construct a good design, it spends just a few poorly written pages on transform analysis (the main construction technique). OBS: The huge advantage of the structured methodologies over OOP is that they are *rigorous*. They have rigorous specification techniques (structured analysis), rigorous methods of transforming the specs into design (transform analysis) and rigorous methods of transforming the design into code (structured programming). "The Practical Guide to Structured Systems Design" fails to teach soundly these techniques. The book is well structured. Sections I-III present what (good) structured design is. Section IV deals with a brief presentation of structured analysis. Section V is the core of the book and, unfortunately, that's where the book is most weak. The section is named emphatically "Design Strategies" but in fact it shows just one "strategy": transaction analysis followed by transform analysis. The presentation is bad, cluttered with poorly chosen examples and misplaced figures (a figure referenced at some point may be placed actually two pages after the reference). Sections VI and VII are simply mambo-jambo: pages filled with generalities about performance or project management with very little value for the actual performance engineer or project manager. *** It is well known that writing a good practical guide in anything is very difficult since it is hard to find the right balance between theory and practice. But, considering what it really delivers compared to its purpose, this book is grossly overrated and not of very much value for someone interested in the rigorous and systematic characteristics of structured design methodologies. | ||
Great book about design of non-object-oriented systems A real classic like Tom DeMarco's "Structured Analysis and System Specification". One of the top ten favorites in my bookshelf. | ||