Customer Reviews
Overated... - By: E. Squire, 23 Oct 2008 
I'm all for new approachesin learning but I find that this book while seeking to de-mystify various OO design concepts actually introduces more confusion.
One of the worst offending chapters is the one on the factory design pattern. I find myself wanting to scream at the book 'ENOUGH PIZZA ALREADY, JUST TELL ME WHAT THE HELL I NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE PATTERN GODDAMMIT!!!' After my 3rd re-read of the chapter I think I have been introduced to 2 1/2 patterns or rather one that is more of an 'idiom' than a pattern.
It doesn't help either when the authors state that it would be impossible to write a functioning programming if we stuck to ideal design principles.
My impression is that this book is getting rave reviews from other readers because they, like me, are sick of dense, unreadable tomes that give you a migraine within minutes of turning the first page.
I think that the authors have exchanged clarity for readability.
Are people really giving this 5 stars - By: W. Shareef, 25 Sep 2008 I am kind of surprised that so many people have given this 5 stars. I don't think this book is very good & here are my reasons.
1- The book is writtenin a style that some people may not like, although this was not a problem for me. What did annoy me was the way they wrote the code bit by bit over many pages filled with a lot of people & pizzasin between. It means you can never use it as a quick reference as you have to search for the final correct piece of code.
2- There are no full code examples. Yes everything presented isin fragments, you will never see a complete piece of programme.
3- It uses Java, which looks like C# to all intents & purposes. But this stops them from displaying full code listings. The code itself is all over the place.
4- The book is definitely bloated with what seems quite a lot of unnecessary explanations & re-explanations.
5- I never felt they gave enough programming scenarios of the advantages of using the patterns, although there was a lot of talk.
Fantastic - By: Mr. M. Rolf, 08 Aug 2008 
A very good book. Its been written to be read from cover to cover & its a joy to do so. There are a lot of practice questions & task to do, which means you have to put the effortin but you will learn a lot.
Not just for JAVA - By: William Duffy, 12 Jun 2008 I am an ASP.NET developer & writein VB & C#. If you programin any OO language the fact that this book is writtenin Java will not be a problemin the slightest.
This book impressed me by the way it took you through implementations of the design patternsin order to help break the learning curve down into more manageable segments. After reading each chapter I knew exactly how the pattern was applied & understood it fully.
Something that was a real eye opener for me was that from reading this book I could see that design patterns exist EVERYWHEREin the .NET framework. User controls implements the composite pattern, the whole event driven model is based around the observer pattern & I don't know how many times I've been unknowingly using the template pattern!
There really shouldn't be any reason an OO programmer doesn't read this book (even if they are already clued up on their design patterns). It's an easy, fun & enlightening read.
A really enjoyable read - By: James P. Taylor, 13 May 2008 This has got to be the most enjoyable programming book I have ever read. Every spare minute I have is spent wanting to see what happens next. I have only ever felt this with novels before.
As to the content, I could relate many of the design patterns shown to what I have done or seenin the past, but they also show reasoning & extra detail & insight than what I have noticed myself.
A great read, I'm learning lots. I'm interested to see what the other Head First books are like now.
