| Story of Phyl (and friends) |
Classic Data Structures in Java | |
by Timothy A. Budd | |
Published by Addison-Wesley Longman |
Phyl is the platypus that has appeared on several of my books on object-oriented programming, most notably on Introduction to Object-oriented Programming, and on Understanding Object-Oriented Programming with Java.
Originally phyl was intended to represent two important ideas in OOP, namely inheritance and overriding. (A playpus, of course, is a mammal that lays eggs, and hence overrides the behavior common to all other mammals). He was just one of many cover ideas I submitted to my editor at Addison when we were thinking of cover ideas for the book An Introduction to Object-Oriented Programming.
I've collected a number of funny stories about phyl.
Since then Phyl has become sort of a mascot. His latest appearence is on the cover of the Java data structures textbook, where he appears with his family and friends. Looking at the cover, can you spot the following data structures?