Book Report - Head First Design Patterns
posted under category: General on March 19, 2011 by Nathan
I've had the great pleasure of taking extra time to read this year. I had a few books given to me at Christmas, so I've been polishing off as many books from last year as I could, in order to get to this year's books. The First victim on the list was Head First Design Patterns.
I'm a huge fan of the Head First series. The first moment I saw Head First Java at my local book store, I bought it. The helpful, irreverent, comical style of the Head First series was a great change from technical books I had seen before. I sped through it, did all the puzzles, and learned a load of Java. I loved it. Not long after, I went through Head First Servlets and JSP and Head First EJB, both benefits to my web development brain, but because I don't do servlets, JSP or EJB, it was really more theoretical. I decided to bring it back into the realm of something I could actually use.
Head First Design Patterns uses the same tone, the same kinds of jokes, the same repetitous learning style that works so well, and it covers a range of design patterns as implemented in Java. Because Java is so similar to CFML, the translation to my world was easy. Also, it's not so code heavy that you need deep knowledge of Java.
The book talks through common problems we face as programmers, and the most common strategies we can use to solve them. The majority of the book is talk about these patterns - the strategy pattern, the observer pattern, the factory pattern, and other important blueprints you should know about.
One of the strange things for me was that I had already implemented a lot of these concepts. I was doing a lot of things right before I knew the name my pattern goes by. The rest of the time reading, I spent thinking about how I was doing it wrong. It opened a lot of doors that I otherwise would not have known about.
If you know a little about object oriented design patterns, or you always wanted to, I recommend this book. If you are trying to get into Object-Oriented Programming but haven't figured out how to make your objects smarter, this could be your savior. It's smart without making you feel bad. It's hard concepts boiled down to casual conversation.
Another cool thing, the book comes with a giant design patterns poster. I hang it right next to my desk and look to it when I need inspiration working on my object-oriented designs.
If you like the sound of Head First Design Patterns, it is available from O'Reilly, or where I bought it, on Amazon (down around $25 when I wrote this).
This being an O'Reilly book, you may be able to get a free review copy through your local user group. The catch is you have to type and post a review of your own like this one. Check with your user group manager.
Next up is Javascript: The Good Parts, finished just this last week.