Head First Design Patterns

More Praise for Head First Design Patterns

“Great code design is, first and foremost, great information design. A code designer is teaching a computer how to do something, and it is no surprise that a great teacher of computers should turn out to be a great teacher of programmers. This book’s admirable clarity, humor, and substantial doses of clever make it the sort of book that helps even non-programmers think well about problem-solving.”

—Cory Doctorow, co-editor of Boing Boing and author of Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom and Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town

“There’s an old saying in the computer and videogame business—well, it can’t be that old because the discipline is not all that old—and it goes something like this: Design is Life. What’s particularly curious about this phrase is that even today almost no one who works at the craft of creating electronic games can agree on what it means to ‘design’ a game. Is the designer a software engineer? An art director? A storyteller? An architect or a builder? A pitch person or a visionary? Can an individual indeed be in part all of these? And most importantly, who the %$!#&* cares?

It has been said that the ‘designed by’ credit in interactive entertainment is akin to the ‘directed by’ credit in filmmaking, which in fact allows it to share DNA with perhaps the single most controversial, overstated, and too often entirely lacking in humility credit grab ever propagated on commercial art. Good company, eh? Yet if Design is Life, then perhaps it is time we spent some quality cycles thinking about what it is.

Eric Freeman and Elisabeth Robson have intrepidly volunteered to look behind the code curtain for us in Head First Design Patterns. I’m not sure either of them cares all that much about the PlayStation or X-Box, nor should they. Yet they do address the notion of design at a significantly honest level such that anyone looking for ego reinforcement of his or her own brilliant auteurship is best advised not to go digging here where truth is stunningly revealed. Sophists and circus barkers need not apply. Next-generation literati, please come equipped with a pencil.”

—Ken Goldstein, Executive Vice President & Managing Director, Disney Online

“Just the right tone for the geeked-out, casual-cool guru coder in all of us. The right reference for practical development strategies—gets my brain going without having to slog through a bunch of tired, stale professor-speak.”

—Travis Kalanick, CEO and cofounder of Uber and Member of the MIT TR100

“This book combines good humor, great examples, and in-depth knowledge of Design Patterns in such a way that makes learning fun. Being in the entertainment technology industry, I am intrigued by the Hollywood Principle and the home theater Facade Pattern, to name a few. The understanding of Design Patterns not only helps us create reusable and maintainable quality software, but also helps sharpen our problem-solving skills across all problem domains. This book is a must-read for all computer professionals and students.”

—Newton Lee, Founder and Editor-in-Chief, Association for Computing Machinery’s (ACM) Computers in Entertainment (acmcie.org)