Design Patterns: Elements Of Reusable Object-oriented Software

This is a very useful and powerful book. It teaches us what the solutions are with various problems.

Practical examples abound in this book. The authors take you through complex examples illustrating the drawbacks and benefits of various approaches. A real WYSIWYG editor is used as an example, followed by discussion of various design patterns. Definitely one of my favourites !

Truly, after reading this book, you won't ever think about object-oriented design in the same way. (Maybe a little bit exaggerating if you are pattern guru). You would be able to solve specific design problems and make object-oriented designs more flexible, elegant, and ultimately reusable using these patterns. These patterns help designers reuse successful designs by basing new designs on prior experience. The whole design process will be much faster (without reinventing the wheels) and reliable (with proven technique). It also increased common communication ground between designers and developers.

Don't be surprised that you can even make client/server (or distributed) system out of these patterns (i.e., Observer (Stock price notification), Command (remote execution), Proxy, etc.) with minimal efforts, even though the authors claimed these patterns are not for network models.

I believe every designer and developer would benefit from authors' wisdom and insights about OOD with patterns. Please do not argue the sample code is not in JAVA (EXCEPT you don't know JAVA at all and can not understand what the pattern means, in which case I think it would make this argument self defeated.) It is really the concept that works here not the programming language.

Why bust your brain trying to come up with a design for your application when somebody else has already done it for you? This book features 23 reusable design patterns that will save you a lot of time in designing your next application. Patterns that have been proven to work in various projects. A must for all object-oriented designers!

Since this book was first introduced to me in a university OO software design course it has been one of the first mainstay references in my library. I'm quite critical when it comes to tech. books, but this is one to have. Much of the current OO design world finds its roots in this book.