I found the book Head First Design Patterns by Eric Freeman, Elisabeth Freemen, Kathy Sierra, and Bert Bates a couple of days ago, ordered it, and received it last night. I have already read a couple of chapters and really like the format. The "Head First" series is something new from O'Reilly. This book, like the others in their series, is Java based, but it is easy enough to convert some of the code ideas and concepts into C# (in fact, I spent a few minutes this morning converting their Strategy Pattern sample from Java into C# -- a nice exercise to see what is similar and different between the two languages).
The Head First series and this book uses the latest research in neurobiology, cognitive science, and learning theory to present visually appealing content and repetition in order to achieve one goal: help the reader to learn and retain information as efficiently as possible. If you are new to patterns, you won't learn every pattern you see in the GoF book, but you will learn enough of what you need to get started developing and to prepare you for digging deeper in the other books. Most of all, this is a FUN book! See what a couple of notables have said about this book:
I received the book yesterday and I started to read it on the way home... and I couldn't stop, took it to the gym and I expect people must have seen me smile a lot while I was exercising and reading. This is tres "cool". It is fun but they cover a lot of ground and in particular they are right to the point.
-- Erich Gamma, IBM Distinguished Engineer, and coauthor of "Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software"
I feel like a thousand pounds of books have just been lifted off my head.
-- Ward Cunningham, inventor of the Wiki and founder of the Hillside Group
These quotes are from the book and the authors' website: http://www.wickedlysmart.com.
I am not the only one talking about this as Rama also posted on this book a couple of days ago as well.
Again, this is an interesting and fun addition to the Patterns literature. Check it out for yourself, and let me know what you think.
