Head First Design Patterns (Head First) by Elisabeth Freeman, Eric Freeman, Bert Bates, Kathy Sierra Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Head First Design Patterns (Head First)
Book Review: Way Cool ... Worth the Bucks...
Summary: 5 Stars
This is an excellent book for learning patterns. It is technical sound and entertaining. I buy every book out there on patterns. This one will join the ranks of one of those read from front to back. It is very well done.Book Review: An excellent resource
Summary: 5 Stars
This is just an amazing book! Hats off to O'Reilly and Freemans for putting together this book. Book explains the concepts with incredible ease and simplicity, better yet, its such an interesting one that you just dont feel like stopping.
I've been exploring books on Patterns for a while and there are really good ones with 5 Stars etc but they take more traditional approach and things can get boring.
Over all, this just the book you need if you wanna get started with Design Patterns and build a solid foundation.
Book Review: She (the book) is beautiful...!
Summary: 5 Stars
First of all, I would like to thank the authors for writting this excellent book. Hats off to all of you, O'Reilly and Head First Team (for editing)!
I literally love this book. In fact, I kissed this book in front of my wife. :)
I like everything about this book from brain-friendly writting style coupled with sound OO principles to heart-touching examples. The impressing examples in this book are green in my heart.
I have read many books and articles on patterns and found them dry. Bascially, It was boring to learn patterns from windows/UI specific (including maze) examples.
I would like to make a point here about GoF Design Pattern book. It's a good reference book, but GoF MUST come up with second edition.
I humbly respect the great work of the authors and I request them to write more specialized books like this.
Book Review: Very accessible text on design patterns
Summary: 5 Stars
I am quite impressed with this book's explanations of design patterns. The authors start each chapter explaining a problem and then showing how a given implementation or two isn't flexible. Then the text presents a design pattern and shows how to use it and how it solves certain issues. Along the way, the reader is given general design ideas to keep in mind while architecting or refactoring a system.
Because key concepts are repeated throughout the book using different phrasing and examples, I found learning/reviewing each pattern to be straightforward and easy. I haven't used Java since '98, but with C# skills I found the code examples fairly simple to understand.
Also note that this book doesn't explain in detail all the patterns explicated in the Gamma et al. text. Instead, you will learn the Strategy, Observer, Decorator, Factory, Singleton, Command, Adaptor, Facade, Template Method, Iterator, Composite, State, and Proxy patterns will full explanations and code examples. Other patterns (e.g., Bridge, Builder, Chain of Responsibility, etc.) receive only a brief overview in the back of the book. The authors feel that those patterns aren't used as often and consequently necessitate less coverage.
If you're looking for no-nonsense writing that delivers design pattern facts in a most direct manner, then choose the original Gang of Four Design Patterns book instead. But for a much friendlier introduction and explanation of patterns, pick up Head First Design Patterns right away and use Design Patterns by Gamma et al. as a reference. Highly recommended.
Book Review: for new Java programmers
Summary: 4 Stars
There have been several successful books in this Head First series. They tackled the learning of Java, EJBs, Servlets and JSPs. By necessity, a fair portion of those books had to deal with teaching the elementary syntax.
But suppose you are now programming in Java. It's time to move to more powerful abstractions, called design patterns, and addressed by this book. What the authors have done is take well known patterns, like Observer, Decorator, Factory and Singleton, and explain them in an informal, conversational style. Replete with many diagrams, also informally marked up.
Basically, they have taken classic texts on design patterns, like by the Gang of Four, and totally rewritten them in simpler form, to reach a broader audience. Experienced Java programmers who've never dealt with this subject should probably consult those standard texts. But newer programmers might come here.