Looking for a good introduction to object oriented programming with Python

[Roy Smith]

In article <w42dnZxoF-IT6ILNnZ2dnUVZ8vydnZ2d at bt.com>,
 lipska the kat <lipskathekat at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

> UML works, non technical 'stakeholders' (yuk) can understand it at a 
> high level and in my HUMBLE opinion the sequence diagram is the single 
> most important piece of documentation in the entire software project

Yup.  Sequence diagrams are the most common one I draw.  I'm sure I use 
the wrong kinds of arrowheads and such, but the general idea is pretty 
powerful.

I find they can be useful for figuring out some horrible piece of code 
you've never worked with before.  Just sit down and start reading the 
code, drawing the diagram as you go.  Sometimes things start to make 
sense that way when just staring at the code isn't doing it for you.

My most successful experiment with UML was when trying to understand 
some big hunk of C++ somebody had thrown at me.  I imported the whole 
thing into some UML tool, which not only found all the classes, but also 
sorted out how they were related.  Pushing boxes around in the GUI tool 
turned out to be a useful way to get my head around how the code worked.

The problem with UML is that, like so many good ideas, it has developed 
a mystique around it.  With layers of gurus who know progressively more 
and more about the esoteric details.  And who make a living writing 
books and giving seminars about it.  Kind of like patterns, and agile, 
and scrum, and XP, and so on.