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Summary: GOF
Review: Ok geeks what is the GoF book you all keep mentioning?
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Summary: this book + GoF = great fun
Review: I work in a nuclear physics experiment with a few hundred thousand lines of code, with douzens of programmers worldwide checking in code into a CVS repository and a small group of computer gurus that are the design architects of the system, being nervous every time one of us ,the mere mortal programmers, add substantial pieces of code. Now I understand why. The reason is that the gurus know about design patterns , OOD and the like, while we want to just solve problems, applying short term patches and thinking procedural. They come from a completely different point of view than the average programmer.This book was an eye openner. After a couple of years of experience in a large scale system like that, I was able to read this book cover to cover within a few days. I cant count the times I said to myself, "Oh, now I see why they were insisting not to duplicate code like this", or "Now I understand why they were insisting to use a factory method in order to instantiate the different versions of subsystems code". I first tried to read the GoF book. I found it pretty dry and a bit frustrating. I understood that I was reading great and important stuff but I was not completely convinced and I was left with this taste in the mouth of "I would never implement it like this, its just too complicated".
You see, you can never be convinced about something until you understand it. And then I looked for help and I run across the "Design patterns explained" book. It really starts from the beginning, even the first few chapters -that did not teach me anything I did not know already - were a nice review on object oriented design that put everything into a context for the rest of the book. The design patters are explained thorougly and what I really enjoyed is that in a lot of instances the pattern was not just thrown to my face but actually DERIVED from the 2 or three basic principles that the authors advocate throughout the book: a) favor composition over inheritance
b) find what varies and encapsulate it
c) one rule,one place Being a physicist, I thorougly enjoyed the use of a few basic principles in order to derive a new pattern. The C++ snipets of code I must admit where pretty lame in the book, they authors didnt pay too much attention on that, but , still, for someone that knows some C++ it was easy to understand the mistakes. Besides that, the code was iluminating on how to implement a particular pattern. Evey time that I would finish reading a pattern in this book I would go to the GoF book -the authors are kind enough to point you to the pages of the GoF book for the pattern that they explain - and it was evident that now I can understand so much better the more sophisticated and abstract GoF explanations. I liked the book so much and it makes such a good companion to the GoF book that I cant stop searching the internet for new patterns. It is addicitve. It has made me so much better programmer, actually designer I should say. You start this book as a programmer and you end up as a novice designer. Not experienced but enough to let you see what lies ahead. I holeharteadly recommend it.
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Summary: Now I get it
Review: I use this book as a companion to Designs Patterns by the GOF. I would read about a pattern in the GOF book and say to myself, I think I get it. I would read it again, look at the samples, but it would not always click. Now I just read about it in Design Patterns Explained and I have a better understanding about the pattern and how to use it. If you are new to patterns definitely buy this book. You will start understanding and using patterns faster with this book than with the GOF book.
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Summary: Maybe a good introduction book, but far from its title
Review: I borrowed this book from USC library for one friend. I browsed it for a little while. Although this book gets very good rating on the book site, but I didn't find it useful to me at all. As a good book about design, as the title indicated, the author should explain more about why a design change is needed, and the consequences of this change. But unfortunately, the author just simply "applied" a design pattern to his sample. I doubt if he really knows the result of this change. We are facing a changing world, and the system requirements always change. That's why we need design patterns to make our system flexible to these changes. The author use design patterns as a tool to fix a bad design. That is the lowest form to use design patterns. The author should do better than that to name his book "A New Perspective on Object-Oriented Design"...
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Summary: Gives a fresh Perspective on OOD and is well written
Review: Before reading this book I had read other books on patterns, starting with the GoF book. However, after reading these books, I still felt I didn't understand patterns well enough to really incorporate them into my everyday work. Some of the other books I read were very conceptual and found them hard to follow. This book provides both the reasons to use patterns and motivations for some of the most common patterns, but it does it in a way that is very understandable. Part of this is because of the way the patterns are presented. The author first explains a pattern and then shows how to derive the pattern. While explaining a pattern, the author points out the good OO practices that the pattern uses (i.e. encapsulation, high cohesion, loose coupling, etc.), thus re-inforcing the idea of using good OO practices in your designs, whether you use the pattern being explained or not. By using a real-life experience to walk you through various patterns, I found it very easy to follow and understand the intent and possible implementations of the pattern(s) being explained. The author also provides some code examples which help to firm-up your understanding of the implementation of the pattern being explained (both Java and C++ code is given). Overall, I think this book is good for anyone who wants a new insight into OOD and how to use design patterns in your everyday work.
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Summary: Excellent Book---very well written---buy it
Review: A few months ago, a friend invited me to attend a free seminar about design patterns, put on by Alan Shalloway, in Bellevue. I was not expecting much---it was free, only two hours, and I feel that most of the seminars, of all types, I have attended over the years were not worth my employer's money. My favorite method to learn is books. I was pleasantly surprised. We were given full printouts of all the slides, and Mr. Shalloway had my complete attention for the full two hours. In addition, I walked out with information that could be put to immediate use. I got more benefit from his two-hour seminar than from most multi-days seminars I have attended, which cost substantial amounts of money. I attended another of his seminars "The Need for Agility" and found it to be equally good. Design Patterns Explained is excellent. In fact, it is one of the very best books, about any subject, that I have ever read; and I read a lot of books. Even if I wasn't interested in design patterns, I would appreciate it simply because it is so well written. The explanations are very clear, and Mr. Strunk would have a difficult time finding wasted words in this book. There probably are not many positive comments I could make about the content that have not already been made in other reviews. For me (I am relatively new to programming), the greatest benefit of reading Design Patterns Explained, is that my appetite has been whetted to devote a lot of study to analysis and design. (I have a long list of books to read) At this point, my impression is that to learn a object-oriented language, such as C# or Java, without also devoting a lot of time to learning the principles of OO analysis and design, is akin to owning a guitar, but not devoting much effort to learn to play it. You will probably get a lot of noise and maybe some music out of it, but not nearly as much music as you would if you had devoted time to learn to play correctly. I believe managers of software development teams would get a positive payback (very positive) on their investment from having their developers read Design Patterns Explained and attend Mr. Shalloway's seminars. I recommend reading Design Patterns Explained beforehand as you will probably have more questions at the seminar. My compliments to Mr. Shalloway and Mr. Trott for a very fine book. It has been of immense help to me.
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Summary: No more difficult language, excellent book to learn
Review: This is the book I was looking for all along! If I had this book 7 years ago, I would have understood the most basic patterns a lot sooner. The kind of personal language used gives this book a unique familiar touch that I have not seen before.
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Summary: Design Patterns: for Dummies....
Review: Any time I read books that claim to be the product of epiphanies I get worried. In this case, it's more than justified. I bought this book because of the good reviews here, thinking that it might be a good way to get some of the junior programmers in our group into patterns. Instead, it's ultimately a very shallow revelation delivered in a style that eventually makes me think the writers are slipping back into the same stories over and over again between bouts of polident and fibercon, repeating themselves ad nauseum. There are many good, important points made in the book, unfortunately they are all lifted from other books. The original material here, when you strip away the bowdlerized, readers digest sendup of the gang of four, Meyer, and Alexander, boils down to how the authors solved one silly problem with a legacy CAD app (zzz....zzzz....). Save your money.
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Summary: Very good introduction for Patterns
Review: This is one of the best books I have ever read on patterns and object oriented programming. It gives you a new perspective about design and helps you to write your programs with change in mind. I highly recommend it.
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Summary: Superb Explanation - And it's my Favorite UML Book
Review: I bought this book because it's purely conceptual, and does a great job in giving the reader a true grasp of design pattern concepts. My copy is well highlighted, and I refer to it often. But funny enough, with all of my other reference books, I keep turning back to this one to do a quick look-up when I want to make sure I'm approaching a project the right way, and it offers up my answers instantly, and in some cases has saved me from barking up the wrong tree and recommending a too-expensive solution for my clients. Another thing I love about this book is its amazing structure: every single chapter begins with a clear "Here's what's in this chapter" clarification, and ends with a clear summary of the concepts covered, in a very usable form. And something I've never seen anywhere else, it has margin comments next to every paragraph that state what's in the paragraph they accompany, such as "Variations in Façade: reduce the number of objects a client must work with" or "Indicating the number of things another object has" - what a timesaver! It's a good thing the pages are printed on such high quality paper, because I thumb through it so much - and put it to so much use!
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