Reviews for Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software

1. Essential Book

   Rated 5 out of 5 stars, March 12th, 2010

   This book is essential reading for all software engineers. The only reasons not to buy it, are:- A) you already own it, B) you have knowledge of every single pattern in the book, C) you can borrow a copy, or D) you don't want to be good at your job.
   
   The book is easy to read, no distracting side notes and you can use the knowledge in it almost straight away.

2. Perfect book for reference

   Rated 4 out of 5 stars, January 12th, 2010

   This book is essential in any software development library! You can use it to learn or as reference.

3. Plausable

   Rated 4 out of 5 stars, December 12th, 2008

   I think that a good way to handle this book is to read it from cover to cover, then think about the patterns for a few weeks and then read relevant chapters once again when you are about to implement a given pattern.
   
   Also, one thing to be aware of is that this book has been written before the template era, therefore many implementation examples are outdated and can be replaced with much more elegant template based solutions. For example boost::shared_ptr can be used to safely return a dynamically allocated Iterator object without worrying about memory leaks.
   
   I can't wait to use all this stuff in my next project!

4. The 5 stars it gets are for historical contribution to the art of software only. Buy a more readable book on the subject!

   Rated 1 out of 5 stars, December 12th, 2008

   My subject title says it all. These guys are to developers and architects what geeks are to business people. Ever heard business people complain they can't speak tech speak and we'd better shape up and learn the language of business if we want to keep our jobs? Well you'll be complaining about how these guys try to explain their subject to you.
   
   These guys would have been first out the door in your business as they can't explain how to boil and egg without shrouding it in mystery and science. Talk about surrounding yourself in importance then this book is probably aimed at that because the patterns are simple and easy to understand in practice, BUT NOT IF YOU READ THIS BOOK! No doubt if they had written it simply in the first place it would no doubt have not been received in the academic world and would not have its place in history today. As it is, if you want to look important and well clued up then buy this book to show off on your shelves and while your at it put it next to a Charles Petzold book.
   
   These guys get 5 stars for their research and nothing for authorship. If you really want to do your job well, steer clear of this and look elsewhere for real examples of how to make patterns work for you.

5. The language of software development

   Rated 5 out of 5 stars, December 12th, 2008

   I've owned this book for a number of years and still refer to it on a regular basis. Although it can be a hard read the value of the content is the common language it has introduced to the industry.
   The code constructs in the book were not new even when it was written. In order to qualify as a pattern any particular construct has to be proven as a good solution to a recurring problem. What this book did was describe the best and most commonly used patterns and give them names. Those names have become part of the fundamental underpinnings of modern object orientated software development.
   Every software developer should have this book, even if just to be able to understand what everyone is talking about when they mention adapter, facade, factory, composite, visitor and the rest.