This book gives a very excellent all-around perspective on object-oriented programming. The examples are a bit limited in scope, but this is made up for by showing the evolution of a simple class through many of the OO techniques available in Perl. He shows you how to enforce strict encapsulation, but also tells you that you probably don't have to enforce this. Various inheritance techniques and tools are extremely well explained and illustrated. And of course he makes wonderful use of the CPAN resources, letting you know that you are not developing software in a vacuum; there's a lot of resources out there and he shows you how to use them to your advantage.Perl is not C++, it's not Java, and it's not Smalltalk or Eiffel. But Conway gives a wonderful perspective about the differences (and similarities) between all of these languages, and even a straightforward glossary to help you "translate" from one to another where appropriate.