This week, I'm teaching my Designing and Developing OO Apps with CFCs class. The students in this class are really bright people (including a Mathematics professor from the University of Bolgna in Italy), but learning OO is hard work. Or let me qualify that: if all you want to do with CFCs is stuff procedural code into them, it's not very hard at all!

The same is true (and all too common) with Java, as well. But this path gives up all the power of OO. It lets people say, "I know OO" but doesn't provide the sort of benefits that a deep knowledge of OO -- especially polymorphism and encapsulation -- offer.

I've said many times that for a programmer in the year 2005 NOT to know OO is about as close to career suicide as I'd ever want to see. But the truth is that almost none of us "pick up" OO in a few weeks or even months. Doing things the OO way requires a mental reboot.

This is where CFCs can be so valuable. No, they don't offer all the power of languages like Java and C#, but they do let programmers begin their path to OO enlightenment with a language they're already familiar with. If you're wondering where to start, you might want to subscribe to my "Occasional Newsletter" and check out the archived issues at halhelms.com. Apart from that, some excellent books are:

Object Technology: A Manager's Guide by David Taylor. Don't let the "Manager" word fool you: this is a very good, gentle introduction to objects.

Fundamentals of Object-Oriented Design by Meilir Page-Jones will require a few reads, but Meilir approaches the subject with a wealth of knowledge, an easy reading style, and wry humor.

Head First Design Patterns by Elizabeth Freeman et al assumes that you know the basics of OO and does a great job of explaining what design patterns are and providing some of the most useful ones in an unforgettable tutorial.

No matter how you get started on your path to OO-Land, understand that this is not a quick journey. As I like to say, the time to acquire knowledge is BEFORE you need it!