learn object oriented programming

I’m looking for a book that will simultaneously teach me how to use OOP and build a modular app in the process. Does such a thing exist? I wasn’t a computer sci major but I’ve been a web developer for over 7 years and have learned everything on-the-job. I use a lot of objects in my code, but I’m still far from creating an app that’s truly modular with pieces that are truly re-usable. Do I have to go back to school or are there some good books out there that could bring me up to speed?

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I may want to, I may need to, I may not – it doesn’t feel necessary, so off it goes :-)

Getting a piece of work out the door this last week so no time to learn new things. It’s still absolutely on my radar though.

But even so, I’ve gone through the first couple of chapters of my PHP patterns book. I’m currently refreshing my inheritence knowledge. The sooner I progress, the sooner I can earn some money. Will try and make more time this week.

I need to be as good a programmer as I can be. I think this means learning to code with objects. I’m a PHP developer, but I code procedurally. This is great, but I don’t know much about design patterns and working in larger teams.

I’m going to begin by learning OO with PHP. I’ve ordered a book through Amazon to get me started. I’ve done some Java training, but I never really clicked with it. The place I worked at the time didn’t really let me use it, and I didn’t have the motivation to do it in my spare time.

Now I do ;-)

I don’t know what type of knowledge you have of OO and I’m no guru but here are my two cents.

1. Understand the basics of OO, you must understand the concepts of Encapsulation, Polymorphism, etc to program objects. If you do not, you will be programming procedural code with an OO language which is like building a house with a sledgehammer. You can do it, but it’s not the best tool.
2. Make sure you know a language that you can program object oriented code. I would recommend Ruby or Java, though there are of course other great languages that support it. Try to avoid languages that had OO or object based support added on after the fact. Here is a language comparison
3. Read the book Design Patterns to learn the power of objects.
4. Read Martin Fowler’s intro to UML. I don’t think that UML is the greatest, but this book is good way to think more OO and I think Martin Fowler is great.
5. Have fun!

I can code in object oriented systems, but I still don’t feel like I truly have a solid understanding of the concepts. This kind of thing bugs me.