Books about Vlissides from Amazon.com

Design Patterns is a modern classic in the literature of object-oriented development, offering timeless and elegant solutions to common problems in software design. It describes patterns for managing object creation, composing objects into larger structures, and coordinating control flow between objects. The book provides numerous examples where using composition rather than inheritance can improve the reusability and flexibility of code. Note, though, that it's not a tutorial but a catalog that you can use to find an object-oriented design pattern that's appropriate for the needs of your particular application--a selection for virtuoso programmers who appreciate (or require) consistent, well-engineered object-oriented designs..
Price: $39.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

There's a pattern here, and here's how to use it!


Find out how the 23 leading design patterns can save you time and trouble

Ever feel as if you've solved this programming problem before? You -- or someone -- probably did, and that's why there's a design pattern to help this time around. This book shows you how (and when) to use the famous patterns developed by the "Gang of Four," plus some new ones, all designed to make your programming life easier.

Discover how to:
* Simplify the programming process with design patterns
* Make the most of the Decorator, Factory, and Adapter patterns
* Identify which pattern applies
* Reduce the amount of code needed for a task
* Create your own patterns.
Price: $5.63 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Author John Vlissides is a member of the so-called Gang of Four: writers of the bestselling and influential Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software, a catalog of 23 design patterns. This more recent book delivers considerable insight on using and applying software design patterns--reusable designs for common programming problems--and compiles the author's further experience with patterns.

Pattern Hatching first defends the patterns movement by offering 10 myths about patterns, which provide a framework for thinking about the role of patterns in today's software. (While not a silver bullet, the author argues for the continued importance of patterns throughout software engineering.) The next section shows how to apply several patterns (drawn from the original 23) in a file system; the author uses and describes common patterns such as the Composite, Visitor, Proxy, and Singleton. To help illustrate how to use patterns and how they work together, the author also provides C++ source code for the designs in the book.

Part of the fun of reading Pattern Hatching is getting the author's insight on the origin of thinking about patterns, including several patterns that were actually left out of the original book, such as the Generation Gap pattern and the Multicast pattern.

For readers who are familiar with Design Patterns, Pattern Hatching is a lively behind-the-scenes look at one of the most important recent developments in software design. --Richard Dragan.
Price: $15.99 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The second volume in the Pattern Languages of Program Design series offers plenty of hands-on design patterns, including examples drawn from C++ to illustrate pattern use in the real world. The book starts out with some useful programming tips (called idioms) in C++ and Smalltalk for managing memory efficiently and writing faster programs. Subsequent sections look at design patterns (perhaps the most immediately useful kind), including the Command Processor for executing commands, and the Observer Pattern for building efficient components. There's some extensive research on the Proxy pattern, which presents many extensions for a variety of network and distributed solutions. A variety of special-purpose patterns come next, offering expertise on how to organize multimedia applications and design backup redundancy into software. Further chapters in this book cover patterns and how they apply to the software-engineering process. A particular highlight is Frank Buschmann's treatment of reflection, which allows for highly customizable objects and an evaluation of a variety of patterns for managing software projects.

Some of the most accessible and intriguing material are the discussions on patterns for use in the classroom, how to create effective demonstration software, and how to set up a Web site for archiving essays. The book closes with papers on concurrency and distributed systems, featuring several tried-and-true patterns for minimizing the difficulties inherent in large-scale systems and reactive systems (which must process events from users or other inputs in real-time). In all, this second compendium of pattern research has a good mix of the accessible and the arcane and is a worthwhile choice for your library. --Richard Dragan.
Price: $29.88 [Notify me when price goes down.]