Where to start with object oriented design

[arabgogs]

Hi Guys,

I have been browsing this site for a number of years now for articles, advice and code snippets, with great interest in the expertise displayed, never actually posting any questions until now.

I have been coding for a number of years now using procedural code, with breif interludes of OOP attempts, but due to speed necessity being drawn back into procedural to get the jobs done. After much pain I feel I may have come to a point where I can finally move the code forward into a real Object oriented design application. But now I feel a bit overloaded by where to start and how to go about it.

I would love some advice as to where\what to look at, design patterns? n-tier design? entity framework? Peta Poco?... the list seems endless.

I know I will make many mistakes as I have done many a time before, but I am just looking for at least a good start point, as this is a huge project that can be ever changing from outside influences.

I will be using visual studio 2010 (VB.net) I will be manipulating data taken from spreadsheets into both MS Access(moving to MS SQL) and XML(i have been using LinQ of late to manipulate the XML currently with the VB.Net environment)

Thanks guys, any help appreciated, particularly if you can point me towards some decent books or ideally online tutorials.

[Reverend Jim]

It sounds like you are willing to get technical. A really good book is Object Oriented Analysis and Design by Grady Booch. Daniel R. Clark also has a book, Beginning Object-Oriented Programming with VB 2005 From Novice to Professional.

[arabgogs]

Thanks Rev, will have a look at that, may be the best way to go. As I said never ending stream of info here and I think I just need to start somewhere and stick with it. At least until I have made a few mistakes.

[Reverend Jim]

The biggest mistake (as I have read several times) is jumping into the coding before you have defined all of your objects and interfaces. I took a course years ago on the Yourdan method of structured analysis and design. It was overkill for what I was doing at the time but the ideas were correct. It really boiled down to doing a proper design before coding.