Fan mail
Received this today from a heretofore unknown correspondent (I don’t often check Facebook Messenger but just happened to). Name removed (I am not sure he would want me to identify him), text translated from another language into English.
Hello, thanks for your book “Object-Oriented Software Construction” [read in a translation]. I read it after a horrible failure of a project on which I was a consultant. Another consultant was my technical leader. He was truly insufferable but I appreciated him for one reason: his code! I had never seen such “beautiful” program code; he was using principles of genericity, dynamic binding and others, which were totally unknown to me after the lousy programming education I had received. He had insulted me, telling me that I was no developer at all; I was deeply offended since I could feel that he was right. In spite of his unbearable personality I wanted to learn at his side, but he was far too selfish, seeing me just as a competitor, even if a pathetic one. He had a book on the side of his desk… and it’s that book that enabled me to understand where he had learned all those OO design methods. That book, obviously, was yours, and I acquired a copy for myself. I sincerely think that it should be used as textbook in educational institutions. And I really wanted to thank you for writing it. I hope to become a real developer thanks to you. So, thank you.
Note 1: Thanks to you.
Note 2: There is also the intro programming text, Touch of Class (Amazon page).
Note 3 (to my fan club): You are welcome to take advantage of the ideas and there is actually no compelling requirement to be, in addition, “insufferable”.
Eiffel Software
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