By referencing the Handbook, a professional programmer will be able to access the fundamental features of a language, find instructions on writing code and be provided with bibliographical data as well as links to on-line and/or CD-ROM sources of further information concerning the language.

The scope of the Handbook will be quite broad, offering references and programming materials to 20-30 languages of various types. -A complete handbook covering a variety of object oriented programming languages. -Each topic will be covered comprehensively -Written by authoritative contributors

Volume 1 begins with a concise yet useful introduction to object-oriented programming (OOP) and states the benefits of this powerful development approach. The second chapter discusses object-oriented communications software--in particular, the Adaptive Communication Environment (ACE) framework. This latter chapter is more technically challenging, but both of these chapters lay a good foundation for OOP.

The book continues with a section on Smalltalk--one of the most "pure" object-oriented languages around. A chapter entitled "Smalltalk: A Developer's Perspective" puts the language in high-level context, explaining its importance and its benefits for real-world implementation.

A brief history and detailed discussion of the architecture of C++ follows, along with a chapter on common C++ traps and pitfalls. Next, the text presents Eiffel--an object-oriented development lifecycle and language--and two single chapters on Ada 95 and Modula-3. The book wraps up with three chapters on the latest object-oriented language to take the development community by storm--Java. This section features a detailed introductory discussion coauthored by James Gosling--the chief creator of Java. --Stephen Plain

This book is a collection of essays. Point. There is no particular theme nor direction; each essay is independent of the rest of the book. This book is neither a tutorial or a reference work. (although it tries to pass off as one) Its a mix of both.

One common complaint about this book is that its views are biased and not objective in its survey of programming languages. However, we must remember that some of the articles are written by the inventors of the language itself so I don't think is possible for the inventor to be objective about his language. My complaint is that the section on Java is much too brief given its popularity. Also the chapter that introduces OOP is not particularly well written but it is a minor flaw as most the readers of this book are assumed to have a good understanding of OOP concepts.

An interesting and sometimes insightful survery of object programming languages. If you want to sample some of the major OOP languages and how they came to be then this book is an enjoyable read. HPL : OOP is an excellent collection of essays on OOP languages. However, it cannot be considered a reference by any stretch of imagination.

I purchased the book to deepen my knowledge of OOP languages - their similarities, differences, origins, strong points, and pitfalls. Although some of the content may be a little "boring" (e.g., the painfully detailed history of C++), the book provided a good overview of six different OOP languages (C++, SmallTalk, Ada, Java, Modula3, and Eiffel).

I'm not sure how the author selected which OOP languages to cover. It would seem that Object-Pascal (Delphi in particular) was completely overlooked even though it is much more prevelant in commercial implementations than Eiffel or Modula-3. Perhaps losing some of the C++ history and including an overview of additional OOP languages like Delphi would improve the book's usefulness.

Bottom-line: good start, but improvements could surely be made.

Although the first volume claims to be a handbook of object oriented languages it does not cover object oriented languages of Niklaus Wirth's group, e.g. Oberon-2 or its commercial dialect Component Pascal.

Additionally to that, a descendant of Wirth's languages, Modula-3, is claimed to be one of the smallest OO-languages. Due to the ignorance given to Oberon-2, this is only true for the OO languages covered in this handbook. In comparison to Oberon-2, Modula-3 is bloated (language report size is 60 pages vs. 20 pages).

The language family tree on the inside covers do not give the correct descendants/ancestors for some of the languages.

Scrolling through the second volume on imperative languages reveals similar problems: Pascal is only mentioned with its commercial dialect "Turbo Pascal", which -- at least in its last incarnation -- is an OO-language and not imperative one, and should therefore be covered in the first volume. It misses the ISO/ANSI standards (ISO 7185: Standard Pascal and ISO 10206: Extended Pascal). It misses to mention Modula-2 (as I recall from memory, since I did not buy the book).

Since - IMHO - a handbook should be some objective reference, the first two volumes do not meet my criteria for a handbook.