Summary
Not your father's Design Patterns book, Head First Design Patterns provides a unique learning guide to Design Patterns and OO design.

Well, after a few years of talking about writing a patterns book with Mike Hendrickson (the editor behind many of the existing DP books we know and love), it has finally happened: I'm happy to announce that Head First Design Patterns is shipping on Amazon and to booksellers.

You might be saying "So what?" "Do we really need yet another patterns book?" Well, we think you'll find this book unlike any design patterns book you've come across. Why? This is truly written as a "learning book" meant to get you up to speed on what patterns are, when and why to use them (and when not to). If you're a Jr. or Mid-level developer and need to get up to speed on patterns, this book is for you. If you're an experienced programmer but don't feel you know everything about patterns you should? We think this book is for you too. Finally, even if you're a true design patterns expert we think you'll get a kick out of this book and it will actually provide some alpha-geek entertainment (and we know several people in this category who have already told us that is just the case).

A lot of what makes this book unique is its use of the Head First style. If you haven't encountered a Head First book (Head First is a fairly new series being published by O'Reilly), you'll find them written in a visually-rich style that uses conversational language, pop culture references, a fair bit of humour and some occasional irreverance. These books also strive to be technically accurate and complete. I think it's fair to say that the creators of the Head First format, Kathy Sierra and Bert Bates, have developed a near cult like following for this series because it delivers what it promises: a technical page turner that teaches you what you need to know in a way that sticks.

My co-author Elisabeth Freeman and I have found the development of this book so interesting that we're going to be putting out a few articles over the next month or so about the book and the work that went into it and some of the reaction of the patterns community.

Just after its publication, a reviewer, Eric Wuehler, on Amazon summed up the book like this: Other books on design patterns are saying, "Buehler... Buehler... Buehler..." while this book is on the float belting out "Shake it up, baby!"

Exactly the reaction we hoped for...

If you'd like to take a look at the book, Chapter 3 has been posted on O'Reilly's web site.

Eric

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About the Blogger

Dr. Eric Freeman is at heart a computer scientist with a love for designing, building and taking apart software architectures. Named by MIT's Technology review as one of the top 100 young innovators, Eric is currently co-writing a book for O'Reilly and advising clients on Internet strategy. Previously, Eric was Director of Engineering at the Walt Disney Internet Group where he drove the company's broadband efforts. Eric is also an expert in distributed computing and coauthor of Sun's official JavaSpaces book. Eric holds a Ph.D. from Yale University, where he worked with David Gelernter on Lifestreams.