Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine
Save Your Time And Money
| AnyBook4Less.com | Order from a Major Online Bookstore |
|
| Home | Store List | FAQ | Contact Us | | ||
| Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money |
||
 |
Title: Design Patterns by Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson, John Vlissides ISBN: 0-201-63361-2 Publisher: Addison-Wesley Pub Co Pub. Date: 15 January, 1995 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $54.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.52 (170 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: A ground-breaking book that needs to be updated
Comment: Design Patterns was originally published in 1995 and is now on its 27th reprint.
It is the seminal work in Object Oriented programming. The authors have collectively made major contributions to every aspect of computer science and software development. Heck, the book is still not available in soft cover.
It is well organized and greatly informative. The writing style is clear and all but novice programmers should have no problem getting through the book.
But if you are buying the book to learn Java or C#, work mostly on database and web applications or are only going to buy one book on the subject, this may not be the best choice.
We really need a second edition from these leaders of OO programming.
The book is still 100% accurate and correct. But its contemporary audience was probably other computer scientists and experienced programmers who wanted to learn the emerging model. Accordingly, the book's code samples are in C++ and Smalltalk. The authors usually show the application of each pattern by solving problems from the GUI application development world. In 1995, designing portable windowing systems was probably the hottest project around (the Wintel world was still on 3.11 remember).
Thanks in no small part to Design Patterns, developers have tackled the challenges of windowing. Now, developers are probably more focused on the Internet, database portability and web services. They are using new OO languages like Java and C# (and C++).
An audience trying to work through those problems with those languages may find the book just slightly out of reach. Or at least somewhat indirect: you have to make up your own Java code samples and figure out how some of the patterns that solve GUI portability might facilitate database portability.
Of course the point of the pattern is that it can be reused to solve all kinds of problems. But it's easier to learn the patterns if the book covers the problems you are trying to solve.
Depending on your goal, this feedback on Design Patterns may not be a problem. The book is clearly written, informative and accurate. And if you have the budget for a great reference work, Design Patterns is still the seminal text on the subject. As a hardcover, it looks impressive on the bookshelf.
Other shoppers might look for another title more applicable to their specific needs. Someone trying to learn Java, for example, might consider Core J2EE Patterns: Best Practices and Design Strategies, Second Edition, instead.
Hope this helps.
Rating: 4
Summary: Towards a better vocabulary...
Comment: Most standard data structures and algorithms are known by their name(s) eg. 'heap', 'quick sort'. This book talks about solutions to recurring design problems and gives them standard names such as 'Visitor' and 'Abstract Factory' or at the very least the authors hope that they'll become standard. They call these 'design patterns'.
The book's structure is like this: an introduction, followed by a medium-sized example design, followed by a standard-format catalog of 23 'patterns'.
The example is well written but I haven't had the need to look at all 23 patterns.
They've followed architect Christopher Alexander's lead(The Pattern Language). However, Alexander tends to focus more on the problem. These authors focus more on the solution. Despite this, this book can raise the consciousness level of average design practice and make it less of black magic. However be warned that this has a heavy object oriented bias.
Rating: 2
Summary: Way overrated
Comment: This book serve mostly as historical note. In its time pepole use to think that "the answer" is OOP/OOD. If this book prove anything is that OOP/OOD is NOT the answer. For begginer this book is usless since they do not have the knowlage to read it and evaluate it ideas. For experience programmers this book may serve to prove that in some implemention they were using some ideas that other were using. For those with experience that realy find something new here then I think it only time for them to realized that they are very poor designers. You see in C++ you have many tools to use (and OOP is only one). This book seem to be writing by people who start to program in programming laguages that force you to use object - such as smalltalk. C++ is much more then that and now we know (I realy hope that those who are using C++ know) that OOP is just anther thing to use and not the most important one. Anther problem is that it may lead people to use those patterns in much the same way as OOP - seeing pattenrs everywhere (like many programmer who using OOP see object everywhere). Anther problem is that it like those books about "how to succeed in life in 10 steps". Well like there is no magic in being successfull (you can't realy learn how to become one) there is no way in becoming good designer. If you don't know how to design system, no book can save you. Designing good software is like art, if you don't have the gift you cannot do it - and ideas from architecture are the worst to take from. When you designing a system, look in the system that you are building for ideas and not in a book that try to solve problems that are not even there. By the way for Java/C# programmers it maybe more usefull (beacuse those lagauges only support OOP). If you are C++ programmer then learn the laguage realy well (there's much to learn), this is the only thing that will realy help you.
 |
Title: Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code by Martin Fowler, Kent Beck, John Brant, William Opdyke, Don Roberts ISBN: 0201485672 Publisher: Addison-Wesley Pub Co Pub. Date: 28 June, 1999 List Price(USD): $54.99 |
 |
Title: Design Patterns Explained: A New Perspective on Object-Oriented Design by Alan Shalloway, James R. Trott ISBN: 0201715945 Publisher: Addison-Wesley Pub Co Pub. Date: 09 July, 2001 List Price(USD): $44.99 |
 |
Title: UML Distilled: A Brief Guide to the Standard Object Modeling Language, Third Edition by Martin Fowler ISBN: 0321193687 Publisher: Addison-Wesley Pub Co Pub. Date: 19 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $34.99 |
 |
Title: Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture by Martin Fowler ISBN: 0321127420 Publisher: Addison-Wesley Pub Co Pub. Date: 05 November, 2002 List Price(USD): $49.99 |
 |
Title: Effective C++: 50 Specific Ways to Improve Your Programs and Design (2nd Edition) by Scott Meyers ISBN: 0201924889 Publisher: Addison-Wesley Pub Co Pub. Date: 02 September, 1997 List Price(USD): $37.95 |
Thank you for visiting www.AnyBook4Less.com and enjoy your savings!
Copyright� 2001-2021 Send your comments
