Head First Design Patterns
by Elisabeth Freeman, Eric Freeman, Bert Bates, Kathy Sierra, Elisabeth Robson
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Book Summary Information
Author: Bert Bates, Elisabeth Freeman, Elisabeth Robson, Eric Freeman, Kathy SierraEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2004-11-01
ISBN: 0596007124
Number of pages: 688
Publisher: O'Reilly Media
Book Reviews of Head First Design Patterns
Book Review: 3 KEY WARNINGS, BUT A FANTASTIC BOOK
Summary: 5 Stars
OK - So all the reviews here point out the book's presentation is stunning and brilliant. But what about the actual content?
If you look at the negative reviews of this book, they are, almost without exception, all from people who prefer to have their computer books boring. Fair enough. Some folks have had their senses of humor surgically removed. Nevertheless, few reviews here actually seem to comment on the content of the book. So here's some feedback on the actual content:
WARNING #1 - THE WEAKNESSES OF EACH PATTERN ARE VERY LIGHTLY DISCUSSED OR NOT MENTIONED AT ALL.
All of these patterns have weaknesses, but there's almost no coverage of the drawbacks. The book never tells you, for example, "the Strategy Pattern comes at the cost of many new classes and can inhibit understandability". The book would have been greatly improved with a small box at the end of each chapter that tells the reader when they might not want to use the pattern. The authors do provide some analysis of a few patterns, but not until the very end of the book in the "Leftover Patterns" appendix. They should have done this for every pattern in the main portion of the book - not just for the small patterns in the Appendix. Understanding the weaknesses is as important as understanding the strengths of any pattern. There's also some discussion of trade offs in the final chapter, but the book does so only at a high philosophical level. It never specifically highlights the weaknesses of the patterns it covered in the first 500 pages.
WARNING #2 - THE BOOK DOES NOT PRIORITIZE THE PATTERNS.
The reader is never told which patterns are very common and which are seldom used. That would be nice to know. The Decorator pattern is not often used, and when it is, the results can almost always be achieved using some other pattern. They should have presented the patterns in the order of their importance.
WARNING #3 - INDUSTRY DOESN'T DO IT THAT WAY.
These patterns have been around for a long time. Collectively, they form much of the basis for all those grand code-reuse promises we received 20 years ago in the C++ era. Those promises were never realized. Yes - theoretically, if you follow the patterns in this book, you really can achieve a lot more code reuse. But in practice, industry just doesn't follow these patterns - or at least, not over time. It's just too tempting to use concrete classes where you should be using abstract classes, for example. It would have been very valuable had the authors offered some observations about how and where these patterns typically degenerate over time. There are techniques to combat such degeneration. And the reader should know what to look out for.
Bottom Line?
The book is absolutely fantastic despite these shortcomings. If I compare the book to some non-existent ridiculously idealized notion of the perfect book, this book comes up short. Of course, that's not really a good way to measure a book. If you compare this book to other similar books that really exist, it's utterly fantastic! They've made learning about as fun as it can be.
The highly creative and entertaining presentation in this book is what makes it so special. You can even see the style in the cover. The rest of the book is just like the cover - goofy images and lots of humor. The book would be half the size if you removed all the fun parts, but few people would read it cover to cover.
A PROGRAMMER WHO IS NOT AWARE OF THESE PATTHERNS IS LIKE AN AUTHOR WHO NOT KNOW GRAMMAR.
Glenn Hostetler
Author, Web Service and SOA Technologies
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