Rating:  - amazing value!
I am very happy with this purchase. Delivery was prompt, condition of the book ... excellent!
Rating: - Excellent book for all skill levels
I've been a software developer for a few years and I got this book on recommendation from a friend. I expected this book to be too basic or dumb things down too much but I found it to be very informative and easy to follow. I'd definitely recommend this book to anyone at any skill level interested in improving their skills as a programmer. It makes concepts very easy to understand and leaves you feeling like you've learned an incredible amount from it.
Rating: - pretty good book
I bought this book because I got into the wave of designing software using UML designing tools.
As a beginner I found it useful but now looking back this won't save you from countless hours of breaking your head how to joggle with the design to fit in the requirements. And the childish design it actually helps. The books looks fluffy and this lets you see the skeleton of ideas from behind.
When talking about requirements I speak about memory footprint, speed of execution, flexibility, extensibility and so on.
I think this book will help you understand why the solution that you found by yourself actually work and improve the ones that you already have.
If you think that you'll become a good designer reading this, you are in for a big surprise.
As with most of things good guidance and a lot of work helps materialize a good theory.
Take the book and make a few designs. In the first designs don't think about any requirements just design to become able to spot the most obvious design mistakes.
Than go back and impose harder design requirements like how you can tweak it to become faster or consume less memory while still analyzing the design from the book perspective. After a few designs you'll definitely become a better designer.
Another book that helped me was Effective C++: 55 Specific Ways to Improve Your Programs and Designs (3rd Edition) (Addison-Wesley Professional Computing Series). This one is very practical and will help you understand that design patterns are dust in the eyes some times when memory and speed requirements are very tight.
This is my advice from my own experience. If it helps than I guess it is a good advice.
Rating: - Excellent way to connect patterns to real world problems
As many of the reviews point out, this is not a technical book. But this is not a book for dummies, either.
The first few pages state explicitly the purpose of the book: it's aimed at using all centers of one's brain with the purpose of drilling patterns into the long term memory, and to be able to connect patterns to real life problems. Thus, all the pictures, text, and repetition. It's not a dumbed down teaching style nor even a comprehensive course on patterns; the deeper purpose of the book is to get the reader to the "a-ha!" moment where s/he can start finding patterns useful to real-life problems.
This book was of great help to me. As someone who had very little good OO experience, I had no problem understanding patterns on Wikipedia, but I sure did have a problem "connecting" them to the real world. The book has enabled me to overcome the barrier, appreciate good design, and realize just how important patterns are.
Rating:  - This Head First will make your Head 'Spin' First unfortunately
Year back when i looked at Head First Java Servlet series, i was amazed at how clear and simple the concepts were laid out, yea it was good for a starter i thought and did glance it here and there and was pleased.
However There are somethings in Head First Series ( especially with regards to Design Patterns ) that will never click :
1.) Information presentation style is for Kids whereas subject is NOT! ( definitely not, its for people who do some serious stuff everyday and need some recurring problems solutions which can be 'applied' ! )
2.) Examples are absolutely rubbish, For example, in abstract factory i'd rather see a data access object pattern example than say a Pizza ville =(
its a matter of personal taste, for me a subject such as this needs more of a serious introduction than all in "fun" one.
Do yourselves a favor, pick up the old Gang of Four book, its still the best out there. ( and if you need some more specifics to language related problems, buy Core j2ee patterns ).
Regards
Vyas, Anirudh
|
