Head First Design Patterns

A lot of confusion comes down to some bad use of inheritance. Probably the most important OO concept is the Liskov Substitution Principal, viz that if you specify a superclass in a certain place, then any subclass should be a valid use there. The strategy pattern (or its hyperpituitary cousin, IoC) takes advantage of this to allow for run-time change of behaviors, e.g., being able to choose through configuration how to serialize a data structure so the same basic logic can output, say, a dataset as a table or a graph. That said, as OO architecture has matured over the last few decades, there has definitely been a tendency to favor composition over inheritance for code flexibility. I would recommend Head-First Design Patterns as another great book for being able to “get” object-oriented architecture.

- Sapiens - The Lord of the Rings - Siddhartha - Chaos: Making a New Science - The Death Gate cycle books - Neuromancer - Head First Design Patterns - Valis - Dune - The name of the rose I'm sure there are more, but these are the ones off the top of my head.

Head First Design Patterns is awesome. I read a couple other Design Pattern books, but didn't really get it. I didn't want to buy a "Head First" book because it looked kind of silly, but this book has finally opened my eyes to what Design Patterns are about.

1. Head First Design Patterns - Didn't learn patterns in school. This book made a lot of difference in communication with more experienced programmers. 2. Pragmatic Programmer - A classic, learned many practical tips for day to day programming job. 3. Founders at Work - Motivated me to work on my side projects and be constantly learning.

If you want a good alternative to the GoF book try Head First Design Patterns. I findit much more approachable and much more enjoyable to read. http://www.amazon.com/Head-First-Design-Patterns-Freeman-ebo... (http://www.amazon.com/Head-First-Design-Patterns-Freeman-ebook/dp/B00AA36RZY)

It depends heavily on what stage of your career as a programmer you are. I strongly suggest most junior programmers I work with to read Effective Java and Head First Design Patterns. To me, it's a great combination to help you write code that's easy to understand and maintain.

* The Pragmatic Programmer (Read this once every 6 months until it's obvious) * Head first design patterns * Agile Web Development with Rails It's not obvious, but the rails book is a great introduction to test-driven development in general.