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Design Patterns Java(TM) Workbook (Software Patterns Series)
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by Steven John Metsker
Sales Rank: 498301
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List Price: $49.99
$41.50
At Amazon
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Paperback: 496 pages
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional April 4, 2002
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0201743973
ISBN-13: 978-0201743975
Product Dimensions:
9.9 x 8 x 0.6 inches
Shipping Weight: 2.7 pounds
Product Review
Aimed at the intermediate or advanced Java developer, Design Patterns Java Workbook provides an in-depth and challenging look at 23 "classic" software patterns illustrated with Java examples.
This title fills a valuable niche by reprising the well-known guide to patterns, Addison-Wesley's Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Software Design. While that earlier book relied on C++ and Smalltalk for its examples, this new volume uses Java code for the discussion of the same 23 design techniques. Many of the explanations draw on the author's custom classes for a hypothetical fireworks company, supplemented by material using "core" classes in standard Java. This text shows how to both recognize patterns in existing code and to incorporate them into new designs.
Early sections look at interfaces, including a standout section on trees and the Composite pattern. For the chapter on responsibility patterns, veteran Java programmers will appreciate the use of JDBC used to explain the Bridge pattern and tips for spotting other patterns in everyday Java. Builder patterns come next, with a full tour of ways to construct objects more flexibly. When it comes to operations patterns, a notable section on the Interpreter pattern presents some challenging material on language parsers.
Final chapters on extension patterns show how Java classes can extend one another using inheritance and other design principles. The discussion here of Java stream classes as examples of decorator patterns can help explain these rich (and sometimes confusing) sets of objects. Another useful section on Iterators shows how to create "type-safe" collections (normally not available in Java). Throughout this text, the author challenges the reader with dozens of easy-to-difficult questions (including actual design exercises). Complete answers are provided at the end of the book.
As a hands-on workbook that will invite you to think about patterns in Java in new ways, this text is an invaluable companion to earlier titles on patterns. Its mix of design smarts and clever examples help make it ideal for the more advanced programmer. Less experienced readers can also benefit from its intelligent presentation of some of the best available thinking in software design today, now tailored to a Java audience. --Richard Dragan
Book Info
Presents examples, exercises, and challenges that enable you to grapple with alternative approaches and discover practical subtleties in applying design pattern theory to realistic problems. Softcover. CD-ROM included.
Customer Reviews & Comments
If you are old enough to remember Tony Hansen's incredible 'The C++ Answer Book', this is the same thing for Patterns, and in Java. In a lot of ways, I feel like it would be sacrosanct to say anything against this book at all because it truly is something that has been needed for so long. Vlissides' book 'Pattern Hatching' reads like Byron's Manfred: brooding, intellectual, meandering, and at its worst, kind of fussy (but still a great book). This book is the other end of the spectrum. It bends over backwards to constantly recontextualize the discussion and yet it still has the depth to consider trade-offs and challenges in working through implementations. Even though the author recommends Grand's 'Patterns in Java, Vol 1', I recommend this instead. The Grand book is really inconsistent and sloppy, though it has some good parts. My only reservations is that it teeters into the juvenile at times in ways that are so bizarre, you think, wait a second, a minute ago I was pushing through a paragraph that might keep me thinking for a week and now I feel like an imbecile, being told how method dispatching works in OO languages and how that is the basis of polymorphism (I actually had to fish my thumb out of my mouth during that section). While the appendices are very smartly laid out, this book isn't quite as meticulous as the Hansen book so some may look at this and say I don't know what I'm talking about. Maybe for that reason, this will end up fading away faster than it might have if the author had spent a little more time trying to work up material that was a bit more challenging. One final good point: he uses a very good technique in here where he talks about different parts of familiar code that are examples of various Gang of Four patterns. It really is an effective way to get people to realize that patterns aren't an esoteric, academic pursuit. We're all already swimming in them and coders who are not up on them enough to recognize them are probably not going to produce really good code.
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Design Patterns Java(TM) Workbook (Software Patterns Series)
List Price: $49.99
Available from Amazon
Price: $41.50
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