The Pattern Almanac 2000

As a body of literature expands, it reaches the point where collections of detailed explanations become too large and unwieldy to be examined efficiently. When this occurs, it is very helpful for people to collect and organize the descriptions of the features, so that practitioners can quickly look up the general descriptions. That is what Linda Rising has done with software patterns. Each pattern entry in the almanac has the basic information:* Pattern name* Category list of where it is used* Source citation* URL if applicable* What it is designed to do* Related patterns* An experience report citation if applicableMost of the descriptions take up less than a third of a page, so the author has erred on the side of brevity. This was the proper approach, as this is a reference book of brief explanations designed to serve as a primer and a collection of pointers to more detailed information. The good, brief descriptions aside, the real quality of books of this type is measured by the ease of discovery when you conduct a search. The different levels of indexing and the ease with which you can understand them is where one book rises above another. The opening list organizes the patterns alphabetically according to category, the index at the end is approximately one-third of the book and nineteen pages of bibliography are included in the middle. That makes it easy to find a pattern, whether you know it by name or by usage. This is a reference book that you will make use of if you are serious about applying the advantages that software patterns can provide. Neat and well organized, you should be able to find any of the patterns in a matter of seconds, even with minimum knowledge.

Patterns. The current vocabulary of the high end designers and software architects. There are very few universities offering the M.S. courses on this subject; the future language of the software industry. Eric Gamma et al. started this revolution in 1995. It seems that there is no end to it. The author herself has significant experience in the area of Patterns. The book, as its name suggests, is indeed a very good almanac of patterns. The author has taken truly a lot of pains to collect patterns from varous industries & put them in book form. Many of the patterns I have not heard of. That is one of the greatest strengths of the book; it gives you a bird's eye view of all the patterns used in various industries. Another thing I liked about the book, the author mentions relationships with other patterns, though not with details. The layout of the book was not as appealing & the index takes many pages. The patterns should have been accompained by urls. Some url's are given. But, not all. But the effort is really herculean & the author has done a great job to put it in book form. Please note that the book is not for beginners. It is for users who know & use patterns & want to know more about other patterns. I hope the author will come up with more patterns in the near future.

The Almanac is an indispensable tool for the pattern professional. I use it daily in my capacity as a consultant. It's great when I can remember the existence of a pattern, but not quite the name. The Almanac has just enough information for me to recall the essence of the patterns. It's well organized and concise. The only place I can find "all the patterns" in one place.

This is the book that the pattern community has been waiting for! The one source of pointers and intents for all the patterns that have been published about software and selected other topics. In order to locate a pattern, or even know it existed before this book you would have had to have studied all the various pattern books and websites, ranging from the Gang of Four (Gamma, Helm, Johnson & Vlissides) to the latest PLoP proceedings. This book makes it possible to identify a problem that you have (such as dealing with queues), turn to the index to look up that topic (12 different patterns related to queues are indexed, as well as citations of several collections of patterns), and then turn to the cited pages to determine if the patterns might be useful to you in solving your current problem.The value of this book is not that it restates all the patterns, it is in its ability to index the patterns so that they can be found. I think it does an admirable job of this. To achieve this Linda Rising has tackled the monumental job of documenting the intents of all these patterns. For those patterns that I'm familiar with she's done a great job capturing the intent. This book won't make the reader an expert on the use of any pattern, but will contribute to their ability to create better software.

After reading the "Gang of Four" book, and Fowler's "Analysis Patterns", I borrowed this book from a friend. It is just what I have been looking for. This book can be read from cover to cover to get an overview of patterns, as well as be used as a reference (which seems to be what the authors intended).All in all, a very useful book for someone who is using or wants to start using design patterns.