Head First Design Patterns: A Brain-Friendly Guide 1st Edition

by Eric Freeman (Author), Bert Bates (Author), Kathy Sierra (Author),

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ISBN-13: 978-0596007126

ISBN-10: 9780596007126

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Head First Design Patterns: Building Extensible and Maintainable Object-Oriented Software 2nd Edition
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What’s so special about design patterns?

At any given moment, someone struggles with the same software design problems you have. And, chances are, someone else has already solved your problem. This edition of Head First Design Patterns—now updated for Java 8—shows you the tried-and-true, road-tested patterns used by developers to create functional, elegant, reusable, and flexible software. By the time you finish this book, you’ll be able to take advantage of the best design practices and experiences of those who have fought the beast of software design and triumphed.

What’s so special about this book?

We think your time is too valuable to spend struggling with New concepts. Using the latest research in cognitive science and learning theory to craft a multi-sensory learning experience, Head First Design Patterns uses a visually rich format designed for the way your brain works, not a text-heavy approach that puts you to sleep.

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From the Publisher

What you’ll find in Head First Design Patterns, 2014:


The core design principles and design patterns—everything you need to take your programming skills to the next level.	The same great visual explanations and brain-friendly learning style you’re used to from Head First, with exercises and challenges so the design patterns really sink in.	Updated code! The code for all the examples and exercises now compiles and runs with Java 8.

About the Author

Eric Freeman recently ended nearly a decade as a media company executive, having held the position of CTO of Disney Online & Disney.com at The Walt Disney Company. Eric is now devoting his time to WickedlySmart.com and lives with his wife and young daughter in Austin, TX. He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Yale University.

Elisabeth Robson is co-founder of Wickedly Smart, an education company devoted to helping customers gain mastery in web technologies. She's co-author of four bestselling books, Head First Design Patterns, Head First HTML and CSS, Head First HTML5 Programming, and Head First JavaScript Programming.

Bert Bates is a 20-year software developer, a Java instructor, and a co-developer of Sun's upcoming EJB exam (Sun Certified Business Component Developer). His background features a long stint in artificial intelligence, with clients like the Weather Channel, A&E Network, Rockwell, and Timken.

Kathy Sierra has been interested in learning theory since her days as a game developer (Virgin, MGM, Amblin'). More recently, she's been a master trainer for Sun Microsystems, teaching Sun's Java instructors how to teach the latest technologies to customers, and a lead developer of several Sun certification exams. Along with her partner Bert Bates, Kathy created the Head First series. She's also the original founder of the Software Development/Jolt Productivity Award-winning javaranch.com, the largest (and friendliest) all-volunteer Java community.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ 0596007124
Publisher ‏ : ‎ O'Reilly Media; 1st edition (October 1, 2004)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 694 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780596007126
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0596007126
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.29 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 8 x 1.4 x 9.25 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #26,114 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #6 in Java Programming
- #8 in JavaScript Programming (Books)
- #10 in Object-Oriented Software Design

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Eric Freeman
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Eric is described by Head First series co-creator Kathy Sierra as “one of those rare individuals fluent in the language, practice, and culture of multiple domains from hipster hacker, corporate VP, engineer, think tank.” Professionally, Eric recently ended nearly a decade as a media company executive—having held the position of CTO of Disney Online at The Walt Disney Company. Eric is now devoting his time to WickedlySmart, a startup he co-created with Elisabeth Robson.
By training, Eric is a computer scientist, having studied with industry luminary David Gelernter during his Ph.D. work at Yale University. His dissertation is credited as the seminal work in alternatives to the desktop metaphor, and also as the first implementation of activity streams, a concept he and Dr. Gelernter developed.
In his spare time, Eric is deeply involved with music; you’ll find Eric’s latest project, a collaboration with ambient music pioneer Steve Roach, available on the iPhone app store under the name Immersion Station.
Eric lives with his wife and young daughter on Bainbridge Island. His daughter is a frequent vistor to Eric’s studio, where she loves to turn the knobs of his synths and audio effects. Eric’s also passionate about kids education and nutrition, and looking for ways to improve them.
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Elisabeth Robson
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Elisabeth Robson is currently co-founder of Wickedly Smart (wickedlysmart.com) where she is creating new brain-friendly learning products.
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Bert Bates
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Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more
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Dave Norris

Old dog learning new tricks

Reviewed in the United States on August 22, 2018

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I am old. I did my undergrad work before patterns were a thing and worked on legacy systemsy whole career. I found myself on a new project with new technology and new grads. I did not understand what they were talking about with factories, Singleton's, dependency injection, etc. Now I do. I am not an expert but I know the vocabulary and the reasons for what we are trying to do. I can also implement patterns. I certainly lack their expertise but I can talk the talk and begin to walk the walk. Head First methodology is excellent. If you have read other titles you know that already. If you don't, then let me recommend the format.

36 people found this helpful

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Cricket

Amazing Book

Reviewed in the United States on May 25, 2020

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I'm only 10 percent of the way through the book and I've already learned a lot. For the first time since learning to code I feel like I'm actually learning how to structure the programs I write rather than just cobbling together a bunch of random code.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who's learned the basics of object oriented programming and is looking to move to the next level.

The book is highly entertaining as well. My only wish is that I had found it sooner!

2 people found this helpful

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Lou Thomas

Formalizes and Deepens Knowledge of Patterns

Reviewed in the United States on July 9, 2009

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I've been writing object-oriented programs for the last 20 years, and have used many of the patterns listed in this book during that interval. Some of these were picked up through exposure to frameworks that employed them, some from books, and some just re-invented because they made sense for my particular application.

This book collects all of these patterns in one place, including some that I haven't used, and then explores and explains them from a variety of perspectives.

The book is a collaboration between technical experts and experts in learning theory. The result is that motivation for learning the material is thoroughly integrated into the formal content. Rather than just describing the "what" of a pattern, the book starts by dialoguing with the reader about the "why," so that by the time it gets into the "how" in more depth the reader is interested enough to explore all of the nuances of the various approaches to applying the technique. It attempts to anticipate objections the reader might raise regarding the importance of a given pattern, while at the same time throwing light upon the pattern by showing how it addresses real needs.

The presentation and examples are superior to most other books that I've read. There's a fair amount of repetition, but from different perspectives, so that at least one of the facets presented should resonate with the needs and experiences of the reader. In its presentation of the decorator pattern, for instance, the first example was a concocted coffee cost computation program that left me feeling that a critical aspect of that pattern, the building of more specialized functionality by wrapping more basic and fungible functionality, had not been adequately explored. But they followed up immediately with a real-world example from the java.io package that not only explored that aspect of Decorator, but also referenced code that I had already personally encountered and understood.

Another praiseworthy aspect of this book is the way in which it integrates general design principles like programming to an interface (rather than to an implementation) with more specific patterns like the Strategy pattern. This gives the reader a lower level base to fall back upon if a specific pattern cannot be found, or if an existing pattern needs to be specialized for a particular purpose.

This book arrived while I was designing a new application, and upon scanning through the various patterns for additional places within my application where patterns could be applied, I found a couple right away.

All in all, this book represents a raising of the bar for content, presentation and pedagogy in a technical manual.

3 people found this helpful

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D. Siah

This is a super book for java developers

Reviewed in the United States on June 14, 2018

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This is a super book for java developers. I recommend this over the "Gang of Four" of the similar title that defined the field because this is aimed at a more entry level developer or one who is interested in learning object oriented methodologies for the first time. Head first books have always had this amazing sense of humor and tackiness that makes something that is considerably dry palpable. It covers most of the patterns that you'll need and I still see developers with 5-10 years of experience in Java programming picking up the book to solve day-to-day problems.

2 people found this helpful

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Silicon

Best presentation for Abstract Topic like Design pattern!

Reviewed in the United States on March 8, 2016

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I always thinking I should read a book with my kids. Yes! A book that I enjoy while they enjoy as well. A lot of parents would read an animal book, or altas book. I decided to share what I am enjoy with them, programming! And it is a design pattern book which I found HEad First is very fit to the style that I can share with my kids. Me and my kids are really enjoying reading this as they have tons of picture, graph, flowchart to make sure you understand. There is a slight learning curve at the beginning but so far it is a very good book to learn abstract concept. I am not sure about other topic like if solid programming language, C#, or Java will be also nicely present in this kind of format but for a design pattern, nothing is better than a tons of picture, graph and chart like Head First.

One person found this helpful

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Best of its kind, very highly recommended for your team

Reviewed in the United States on November 16, 2006

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At first, the pagecount is intimidating but once you start reading you realize the format bloats the size somewhat. But, do not think that it being oversized means there is not much here. This is one of the best programming books I have yet encountered. No other self-study tool for programming has provided such a rapid learning curve in my experience. And after reading this one, I can hardly wait to start another. In addition, this book makes for a handy reference after reading. Very highly recommended to share with your Java software team in particular. The format is to present a design problem then solve it with a design pattern. The examples are simple yet complex enough to map to real world concepts. The book is packed with class diagrams and enough code examples to illustrate each of the many patterns it discusses. Again, very highly recommended.

3 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Amazon Customer

Would recommend for someone looking to move on from the basics

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 20, 2019

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Really good for anyone looking to get to grasps with object-orientated ideas. I don't personally feel like the book should be taken as gospel (I can see why some more advanced programmers complain about it!) but it's definitely worth a read for anyone wanting to get a head for OO programming.

5 people found this helpful

Dr. Mark Tucker

Child-like

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 14, 2021

Verified Purchase

I bought this because I understood that it would be a good introduction.

That understanding was wrong.

It is written at the level of a five-year-old. It is interspersed with imaginary 'conversations' between two participants that authors have invented: this makes it difficult to follow. This is not a text book: it is more of an illustrated novella - and the illustrations are cartoons rather than informative diagrams. Even worse is the fact that there is more comic font than necessary / useful.

I have finally decided that 'taking up space on the book shelf' is not a good reason to hang on to it - it's off to the book charity.

2 people found this helpful

Ojs

Brilliantcaba

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 29, 2010

Verified Purchase

Great, faboulous, brilliant!

This book was exactly what I was looking for.

It envolves you from its beginning and keep you reading about design patterns, object oriented principles, rubber ducks, MVC, ... until the end of the book.

An excellent way to learn GoF's design patterns, the quality of the content keeps on really high until the last page, something very difficult in these kind of books. Funny, straight forward, clever...

I've read the original Design Patterns book by Erich Gamma, and honestly, it was very difficult for me to understand it. Now, after getting a clear vision about design patterns thanks to Head First Design Patterns, I'm going to give it a go again..

Looking forward to reading another book from Head First series.

One person found this helpful

Pietro Zuco

Must have

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 6, 2018

Verified Purchase

If you program in Java, this is a book you must have. It explains most common and important development patterns. You will be asked about these patterns in interviews and in your daily job. Even if you are not a Java developer, the patterns are almost the same in other OOP languages

2 people found this helpful

S. Hyles

Wonderful

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 26, 2010

Verified Purchase

Having been a professional software developer for over 25 years I have read many books and they all suffer from the same symptoms - how do you get something technically demanding across in a way that makes you want to carry on reading.

This book is the answer. The GoF style-books, whilst technically outstanding, are incredibly hardgoing. This book, with its focus on teaching and learning makes the whole experience self-rewarding.

If you want to learn about design patterns, my advice would be, get an excellent grounding from this book, and then tackle the GoF tomes.

One person found this helpful

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