Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software (Addison-Wesley Professional Computing Series)

I give this book a 3 because it was great when it was written. But now, it is not a very good book to read. Most people who read it acknowledge they can't understand it. There are two excellent books on the market that should be read if you want to learn design patterns.

Head First Design Patterns (Head First) - is the best book to read on what patterns are as solutions to a problem in a context. Fun to read, useful, really wonderful *****.

However, if you want to learn what patterns really are - the thought process behind them, read Design Patterns Explained: A New Perspective on Object-Oriented Design (2nd Edition) (Software Patterns Series) *****

A related book that would also be a good read is Scott Bain's Emergent Design: The Evolutionary Nature of Professional Software Development (Net Objectives Product Development Series) *****

Let's give tribute to the acknowledged #1 classic in the modern software industry. But it is not the book to read to learn patterns anymore.

This book is a classic and doesn't require any further presentations. It is THE Design Patterns bible and every OO programmer should read at least a couple of times.

The samples are in C++ and sometimes Smalltalk but that really doesn't change anything even if you are a Java or C# guy.

If you are looking for a quick way into patterns I'd recommend Head First: Design Patterns as your 1st reading, but buy both and get ready to start reading this one right after.

Overall a good book. In my opinion it is better suited to be a textbook for a software engineering course than a 'self help' kind of book. Can be a bit too theoretical for my taste, but it is an interesting read.

This book doesn't contain any Java hacks or UML 2.0 up to date notations, it contains the core concepts of software design patterns. The 23 GoF Patterns are described by their four inventors. A must have for software engineers.

unlike the last pattern book i reviewed (see my other reviews), this one has an attractive cover. i like blue.