You're not alone. At any given moment, somewhere in the world someone struggles with the same software design problems you have. You know you don't want to reinvent the wheel (or worse, a flat tire), so you look to Design Patterns--the lessons learned by those who've faced the same problems. With Design Patterns, you get to take advantage of the best practices and experience of others, so that you can spend your time on...something else. Something more challenging. Something more complex. Something more fun. You want to learn about the patterns that matter--why to use them, when to use them, how to use them (and when NOT to use them). But you don't just want to see how patterns look in a book, you want to know how they look "in the wild". In their native environment. In other words, in real world applications. You also want to learn how patterns are used in the Java API, and how to exploit Java's built-in pattern support in your own code. You want to learn the real OO design principles and why everything your boss told you about inheritance might be wrong (and what to do instead). You want to learn how those principles will help the next time you're up a creek without a design pattern. Most importantly, you want to learn the "secret language" of Design Patterns so that you can hold your own with your co-worker (and impress cocktail party guests) when he casually mentions his stunningly clever use of Command, Facade, Proxy, and Factory in between sips of a martini. You'll easily counter with your deep understanding of why Singleton isn't as simple as it sounds, how the Factory is so often misunderstood, or on the real relationship between Decorator, Facade and Adapter. With Head First Design Patterns, you'll avoid the embarrassment of thinking Decorator is something from the "Trading Spaces" show. Best of all, in a way that won't put you to sleep! We think your time is too important (and too short) to spend it struggling with academic texts. If you've read a Head First book, you know what to expect--a visually rich format designed for the way your brain works. Using the latest research in neurobiology, cognitive science, and learning theory, Head First Design Patterns will load patterns into your brain in a way that sticks. In a way that lets you put them to work immediately. In a way that makes you better at solving software design problems, and better at speaking the language of patterns with others on your team.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 281 Ratings

A must have for those wanting to learn Design Patterns - 2009-10-17
Reviewer Rating:
I believe this book is a must have for those people that are new to Design Patterns or want to refresh themselves with the concepts of the most used Design Patterns. This book uses pictures and easy to understand terminology that helps you get a grasp of key concepts quickly, and retain them. This book is so much more fun to read and easier to understand than some of the other books out there on the topic. Give this book a chance. I think you'll be happy with it.

3 KEY WARNINGS, BUT A FANTASTIC BOOK - 2009-10-09
Reviewer Rating:
OK - So all the reviews here point out the book's presentation is stunning and brilliant. But what about the actual content?

If you look at the negative reviews of this book, they are, almost without exception, all from people who prefer to have their computer books boring. Fair enough. Some folks have had their senses of humor surgically removed. Nevertheless, few reviews here actually seem to comment on the content of the book. So here's some feedback on the actual content:

WARNING #1 - THE WEAKNESSES OF EACH PATTERN ARE VERY LIGHTLY DISCUSSED OR NOT MENTIONED AT ALL.

All of these patterns have weaknesses, but there's almost no coverage of the drawbacks. The book never tells you, for example, "the Strategy Pattern comes at the cost of many new classes and can inhibit understandability". The book would have been greatly improved with a small box at the end of each chapter that tells the reader when they might not want to use the pattern. The authors do provide some analysis of a few patterns, but not until the very end of the book in the "Leftover Patterns" appendix. They should have done this for every pattern in the main portion of the book - not just for the small patterns in the Appendix. Understanding the weaknesses is as important as understanding the strengths of any pattern. There's also some discussion of trade offs in the final chapter, but the book does so only at a high philosophical level. It never specifically highlights the weaknesses of the patterns it covered in the first 500 pages.

WARNING #2 - THE BOOK DOES NOT PRIORITIZE THE PATTERNS.

The reader is never told which patterns are very common and which are seldom used. That would be nice to know. The Decorator pattern is not often used, and when it is, the results can almost always be achieved using some other pattern. They should have presented the patterns in the order of their importance.

WARNING #3 - INDUSTRY DOESN'T DO IT THAT WAY.

These patterns have been around for a long time. Collectively, they form much of the basis for all those grand code-reuse promises we received 20 years ago in the C++ era. Those promises were never realized. Yes - theoretically, if you follow the patterns in this book, you really can achieve a lot more code reuse. But in practice, industry just doesn't follow these patterns - or at least, not over time. It's just too tempting to use concrete classes where you should be using abstract classes, for example. It would have been very valuable had the authors offered some observations about how and where these patterns typically degenerate over time. There are techniques to combat such degeneration. And the reader should know what to look out for.

Bottom Line?

The book is absolutely fantastic despite these shortcomings. If I compare the book to some non-existent ridiculously idealized notion of the perfect book, this book comes up short. Of course, that's not really a good way to measure a book. If you compare this book to other similar books that really exist, it's utterly fantastic! They've made learning about as fun as it can be.

The highly creative and entertaining presentation in this book is what makes it so special. You can even see the style in the cover. The rest of the book is just like the cover - goofy images and lots of humor. The book would be half the size if you removed all the fun parts, but few people would read it cover to cover.

A PROGRAMMER WHO IS NOT AWARE OF THESE PATTHERNS IS LIKE AN AUTHOR WHO NOT KNOW GRAMMAR.

Glenn Hostetler
Author, Web Service and SOA Technologies

Great book to learn Design Patterns - 2009-11-08
Reviewer Rating:
I have been looking for a Design Patterns book for awhile, and have read a few sample chapters from a few books out there, including the GOF's, and Design patterns in C#. Honestly, although GOF book is the bible of Design Patterns, it was hard to understand... When I grabbed the Head First Design Patterns book - the first thought that came to my mind was - this cant be serious... and surprisingly, the authors knew the readers would get that feeling at first, as explained in the introduction section. I read a sample chapter, and finally it was making sense to me. The language is common conversational style, and with lots of diagrams and most importantly I like the way it gradually introduces you to the problem and how a specific design pattern can be used to solve it...

Excellent book on design patterns - 2009-10-20
Reviewer Rating:
This is an excellent book on design patterns. The book really helps to understand various design patterns, oo principles. I would definitely recommend this book. A must read.

This book is so cool! - 2009-09-07
Reviewer Rating:
One word, this book is COOL. Hats off to the authors for coming up with such an amazing work. This is certainly one of the most useful books I have read in a while. This book has made design patterns piece of cake. Design patterns were never so easy to learn before. I must say this book is a perfect start to learn design patterns. It includes all of the prominent patterns from the original GoF book and explain each pattern in great deal. The examples are well-chosen and make the learning process even more easy. Some time it feels repetitive but that is also with purpose. As the book explains in the very beginning, it helps our brain in absorbing the details. For the same reason emphasis has been put more on images than text, to make learning easy. The result is that you can understand a pattern quickly by following the images and don't have to go through lot of text every time.
Some of the patterns have been considered less important and are included in the appendix with two-page discussion per pattern. My only little complain is that it includes Bridge pattern too even though it is considered among the important patterns (discussed 3rd in Design Patterns Explained by Alan Shalloway, James Trott). Likewise, Visitor pattern is also included there (I think it is a fairly good pattern, or may be I think so because I have implemented it once)
Note that although it is a 600+ pages book but since it includes lots of images, exercises etc, it is actually like a 300 page book, it won't take you long to finish it.
In short, a wonderful book in all respects, go get it.

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