Elisabeth Freeman

I bounced off Head First Java and decided the informal, jokey, playful HF approach didn't work for me; however, I gave it a second chance and purchased this book -- and wow, am I glad!

I have a work-based need to learn how to program in an object-oriented fashion (I've been pretty strictly a procedural Perl programmer for some years), and while I don't know that tackling design patterns is the typical first step for this, it's working well for me. I had two introductory programming courses show more in 2009-10 and the language of instruction was Java ... I've found it fairly easy to re-charge my Java background with this book, and move forward. Kudos! show less

Although I'm still having trouble getting my html assignment done for my online course, this well-designed book for people who have some familiarity with computers, but who are not 'techies," has at least allowed me to make progress and not drop the class. It's humorous, if a little corny at times, has exercises you can do in the book, and is step-by-step with lots of analogies and illustrations.

I think the best way to understand design patterns is to be familiar with them in the code. Sounds weird, isn't it? But that's has been the only thing which has worked for me. There are multiple patterns and many of them subtly different and when design patterns are taught using Java, the "tricks of sub-classing", "addition of layers" , "organizing code" and various permutations of it depending upon the need is what gives rise to so many different patterns. This book does a good job of show more helping you identify those. I personally think, it will be difficult for anyone to go use a pattern, just by reading this book. That skill may only come with experience and writing lot of software programs. This book will help in identifying the pattern, understanding why such a pattern was used and reason about them. Design Patterns are a subtle topic in software engineering, they should just be known and understood and I think, by looking at the code. This book servers as good guide giving points where to look and what to expect. show less

At first, I was a bit annoyed with the cutesy presentation (overuse of photos of cool people with thinking captions above their heads, the “There Are No Dumb Questions” section, etc.). However, after two or three chapters, I appreciated how clear and easy to understand the authors made this dry and tedious subject. I read this for a course where basic HTML knowledge was assumed, so our main focus was on CSS and XHTML. The online extras (links are found in the book) are invaluable! This show more is an excellent resource and I highly recommend it. show less