Design Patterns Explained: A New Perspective on Object-Oriented Design

This book finally showed me the value of design patterns, not as "reusable solutions", but rather as professional best-practices. In fact, I found it so inspiring that I have become a design patterns instructor as a result. If you are interested in patterns but have found the other books difficult to understand, or if you have struggled in your efforts to actually derive value from patterns in your practice, this book can really help you turn the corner. It's a must read for anyone who strives for high-quality software.

This book does a very good job of explaining most of the patterns presented in the GOF text. It also gives details on good OO design in general. The author has a very friendly style and keeps your attention, and the pattern examples and explanations are clear and well thought out. One of my favorite patterns books.

I read the first edition of the book and was greatly pleased by it. I loved the way it described the reasons patterns were good. In other words, although it clearly explained the patterns in the book, it also explained the underlying approach used by the people who wrote the software that later became described as patterns. The book helped me think like these developers instead of just using solutions they had come up with. I also liked the way the authors showed how to use the patterns in the real world. I had always thought you used the patterns as solutions to recurring problems. However, the authors described how the patterns were really about a new way to think of the problem you had to solve. As good as the first edition was, however, it left some gaps. In particular, while the domain analysis approach they espouse called commonality - variability analysis looks great, not enough information on how to actually use it was presented. Also, as XP has become more popular, I had been wondering about how patterns and XP fit into things. The book addresses these and some additional issues incredibly well. (...) Overall, I give this 2 thumbs up and recommend reading it even if you've read the first one. It is a much more involved book than the first with new chapters and improvements on the existing ones.

I don't write reviews often but this book was so good that I felt compelled to do so. It's not just a book about design patterns but also about the thought processes that lead to them. After reading this book (the 2nd edition), I was able to find and fix the flaws I knew I had in one of my existing program designs. By learning to isolate concepts that vary, you can create loosley coupled designs that are easy to modify and extend. Thinking in patterns allows you to see the bigger picture in your design without getting caught up in the details. By having a more conceptual view of your software, you can borrow ideas from time tested solutions. Highly Recommended!

This sparkling little introduction to design patterns is clear, well-organized, and supplied with sufficient sample code to help you understand and use 14 of the most important design patterns. Best of all, the authors provide insight into how using design patterns meshes with best practices in object-oriented analysis and design (OOAD).They explain the shortcomings of traditional OOAD by supplying an example of a brittle, overly complex design that they themselves had crafted. They identify the culprit as overreliance on specialization.The authors then discuss 14 of the most important patterns from the Gang Of Four book, and how using them made their own design more elegant. Along the way, they elucidate several themes you need to know in order to use design patterns:* Encapsulation can hide more than data. It can hide complexity (the Facade pattern) or an ill-suited interface (the Adapter pattern), for example.* Find what is common and make it an interface; find what varies, and encapsulate it.* Don't get lost by plunging into the details of implementation too early; instead, use design patterns to address your problem space at a conceptual level.As suits an introductory work, the authors do not deal with all the design patterns from the Gang Of Four, and not with the same depth. Fortunately, they supply ample footnotes to provide further reading for those of us who want more depth.Bottom Line: You know that if you just turn nouns in your problem space into objects and verbs into methods, you won't magically get a sound design. On the other hand, it is easy to get lost in the complexity of Gamma's classic. Resolve the dilemma by reading this book first! Footnote: as I feel that the vast majority of potential readers will not have the opportunity to attend Shalloway's 2-day course, I will not use the fact that it duplicates much of the book's content as a reason to lower my rating. It's a 5-star work all the way.