Product Description

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.

Head First Design Patterns Poster is a companion to Head First Design Patterns. It summarizes visually, 16 of the most common design patterns including Adapter, Command, Composite Decorator, Observer, Proxy, State, Singleton, Strategy, and more. Each pattern includes a handy page reference to both Head First Design Patterns and the "Gang of Four" text, the canonical description of the pattern, and a visual guide designed (and inspired by the examples in Head First Design Patterns) to jog your memory of the objects, classes, and their relationships.

In addition, the poster includes the "best of" the Head First "Guide to Better Living with Patterns," including how to read a patterns catalog, the power of a shared vocabulary and annihilating evil with anti-patterns.

Visually appealing and truly useful, Head First Design Patterns Poster contains what you need to know at a glance. Head First Design Patterns and this companion poster are a great combination that will load patterns into your brain in a way that sticks.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #99231 in Books
• Published on: 2005-09-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Poster
• 8 pages

From the Publisher
The perfect compliment to our best selling book: Head First Design Patterns

About the Author
Elisabeth Freeman researches new technologies at the Walt Disney Internet Group, focusing most recently on Digital Rights Management, content standards, new media formats, and video on demand over the Internet. In her free time, she is learning XSLT and Objective-C/Cocoa on her Macintosh iBook.

Eric Freeman is the director of engineering of new technologies at the Walt Disney Internet Group, focusing most recently on Digital Rights Management, content standards, new media formats, and video on demand over the Internet.

Customer Reviews

A lot to desire
I checked the last review before buying it, and I thought that maybe I could get the basic UML of the each patterns mentioned in the Book! but the poster is less than that: it only has the pages to find the pattern in the book, and a little introduction to each pattern problem described in the book... it means nothing! If I have a little introduction of the problem, and I don't remember it I cannot figure out the pattern... AND I need the book that has 450 pages in the same place where the poster is.

If you are thinking to buy it, please don't do it, the poster and the delivery cost + the delivery cost to return the poster will be the amount necessary to buy another Head First Book! BUT if you have a big hole in the wall and you want to easly fix it with style, then this poster IS FOR YOU!

I have starred it with just 1 star! because I don't have a hole in the wall... but each time that I check the poster, I seriously think to open one!

I hope this post help to any naive impusilve buyer like me TO NOT BUY THINGs JUST BECAUSE THE BOOK IS GOOD!

Just in case, you are still naive and you don't think that it is the same product... Here is the LINK Head First Design Patterns Poster

Buy the book, copy the pages you need
The poster itself is of good paper quality - thick and glossy.

The content has a lot to be desired. It has an overview/pics of basic patterns - extracted directly from the book.

For the techies...UML diagrams are sparse. 3 out of the 18 patterns presented have UML.

I wouldn't recommend the poster if you don't have (or haven't read) the book. The figures on the poster relate to examples the book contains e.g. Its difficult to interpret/understand a Proxy Pattern based on a gumball machine if you didn't step through the example in the book!

After reading the book, it would have been better if a companion book had been written with brief intros, some diagrams and a bit more UML. With ~30 pages you could keep it on your desk as a reference.

I would have returned my poster if I hadn't binned the packaging on receipt of the poster!

An OK reminder
Not a very well laid-out poster, compared to the carefully thought out book it accompanies - this has the feel of being thrown together quite quickly. The writing on the pattern descriptions is very small, so I can't read it now that it's up on the wall without peering. For such a big poster, with such a relatively small amount of information, it's a shame they didn't come up with a new design that used the space better: I would have liked to see the poster feature only the pattern titles and descriptions, presented clearly and attractively, ideally with all 23 patterns, but with none of the other stuff they've put on there (is anyone really likely to use the 'Write your own patterns here' bit?) Still, it's an aide memoire to accompany a fantastic book, so you may appreciate it anyway.