The Pragmatic Craftsman :: Simplicity from complexity : by Stanley Kubasek ::

Holub on Patterns: Learning Design Patterns by Looking at Code
by Allen Holub
ISBN 159059388X
Date Read 1/2005

My Rating

It’s OK, not great (My review at Amazon.com — 3/5 stars)

I looked at one other book before purchasing this one, Refactoring to Patterns, but I picked this one because this one had 5/5 average review. I should have picked the other one, though.

This book starts out great, the first 2 chapters (out of 4) give you quite a few tips and rules of thumb. However, once you get to chapters 3 and 4, the chapters on patterns, the author does a so-so job. Quite frankly, I had hard time reading those chapters. I thought that by looking at code you might learn more about patterns. Not true. Especially, when you have to look at GUI code, as is the case with this book. I did not like that.

Maybe that’s only me, but I would recommend the Joshua Kerievsky’s book, Refactoring to Patterns, instead (at least look into it).