Elisabeth Freeman's Blog

Design Patterns 10th Anniversary

Time flies... Can you believe it's been ten years since Design Patterns was written and published by the Gang of Four? If you're not familar with this book, you should be: Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software by Gamma, Helm, Johnson, and Vlissides (affectionately known as the "gang of four") introduced the world to the idea of creating reusable, general OO designs that could be applied across lots of problems.

This book certainly changed the way I thought about OO design and has had a huge impact in every organization I've ever worked in. Over the years, however, I've found a lot of the design patterns literature is mostly written from an "academic" perspective and aimed at the OO expert crowd. So, about a year ago, Eric Freeman and I undertook the task of creating a new book on design patterns with the goal of taking a fresh look at patterns, aimed at not only experienced developers, but also those new to OO design. We were lucky to work with Kathy Sierra and Bert Bates, creators of the wildly popular and much-loved Head First series. The result? What we think is the perfect mix of an engaging approach and a fascinating topic.

We're proud announce the publication of Head First Design Patterns and happy that its release coincides with the tenth anniversary of the very first Design Patterns catalog.

Comments

• Just saw Head First Design Patterns at Barnes and Nobel. This is one of the best treatments of the subject that I've ever seen. Do you know if O'Reilly plans to publish a C# version?

  Posted by: sukionline on August 02, 2005 at 08:13 AM

• We may publish a C# version in the future; in the meantime, you can download C# code for the book here.

  Beth Freeman

  Posted by: bethfreeman on August 02, 2005 at 08:18 AM

• Thank you Beth. This book is one of a kind and should truly win awards - I haven't been able to put it down yet. I really appreciate the C# link. Best wishes!

  Posted by: sukionline on August 02, 2005 at 08:18 PM

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