Customer Rating:  
Summary: Textbook
Comment: It's a textbook.
I needed it for a class.
Your mileage may vary.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Insights into using patterns
Comment: This book gives an excellent insight into using some of the patters described in the classic book Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software (Addison-Wesley Professional Computing Series). It explains the reasons why particular patterns are useful and how they can be implemented to solve real-world problems.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Truly a new perspective on an old topic
Comment: IMHO, if you ever wanted to understand Design Patterns and most of the basic OO concepts way much better than you do now, then this is the book. It is well written, easy to read, and the authors convey the information very well. They even stick to the same real-world examples throughout the book while explaining the various concepts and patterns. This book treats the GoF Design Patterns book like the catalog that it should be with lots of references into it.
I randomly decided to bring it along on my recent business trip. I found the book engaging and have studied (not just scanned) almost half of it now. I found it to answer so many questions I had about OO all these years. It provides a strong foundation into thinking about design, OO, and patterns. I highly recommend it. The book's subtitle states, "A new perspective on OO design" and I totally agree with the authors. So far I have covered the Adaptor, Façade, Bridge, and Strategy patterns. They are highly useful and very powerful patterns that allow for easy communication among the designers, the implementers, and the unit testers.
For experienced software engineers, you may find this just a concise repackaging of what you already know and have learned. But you too may still find some new golden nuggets here and there within these pages. Plus, I believe you may find this new perspective enlightening as to why you use design patterns not just how or the pattern as a cookie cutter.
To address all the other prior reviews (especially those with low ratings), this book is in fact a new perspective. If you miss that point then this book will look like just another rehash of the topic of design patterns. But if you really study it and look for and understand this new perspective, you will find it very useful. The authors are trying to have you see design patterns as much more than just a common diagram. It is a better way to conceive of designs and communicate them, with much more understanding behind them. Design patterns are like any other tool; you may understand what a hammer and nail is for, but you may not know all the proper techniques in using a hammer and nail, and therefore your final product will be reasonable but not the best. This book goes a long way to achieving the best.
Customer Rating:
Summary: should be called "Design Explained"
Comment: This book is great. It goes way beyond patterns. It starts with what design patterns are and the main principles behind them (coupling, cohesion, testability, ...). It does this in an interesting manner. We first solve a problem in the way we most likely would. The book then takes us through patterns and shows us a couple of better solutions using patterns and other techniques discussed in the book that are consistent with patterns.
The book also discusses the motivations of the GoF patterns - they manage variation in our problem domain. Variations in our problem domain (i.e., changes) is what makes our life as programmers difficult.
Then the killer- the authors talk about two techniques they use (one in analysis - the analysis matrix; and one in design - commonality - variability analysis) which are awesome. These techniques go way beyond patterns but relate to patterns which is why I guess they are in this book and not in a general design book (which is where they could very well be).
What's also interesting is throughout the book they talk about how patterns relate to eXtreme Programming which gives insights into both.
A must buy!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Recommended for anyone new to patterns
Comment: Although usable as a reference, this book has immense value to anyone new to patterns willing to give a cover to cover read. This book is a great complement to the original Gang Of Four book (which is in need of some touching up). The authors try to offer some insight into places where GOF was lacking. The sections on modular decomposition and principles of applying patterns provide a gateway into the world of effectively applying patterns in your projects.
Finally, I appreciate the authors' use of a uniform case study throughout the book to solidify the intent of a pattern through useful application.
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