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Design patterns : elements of reusable object-oriented software Hardcover – 31 Oct. 1994
Purchase options and add-ons
- ISBN-100201633612
- ISBN-13978-0201633610
- Edition1st
- PublisherAddison Wesley
- Publication date31 Oct. 1994
- LanguageEnglish
- Dimensions23.65 x 19.35 x 2.64 cm
- Print length416 pages
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| Description | By telling and visualizing stories, domain experts and team members make business processes and domain knowledge tangible, enabling everyone to understand the relevant people, activities, and work items. | Concise, readable, and actionable guide to the basics of DDD: What it is, what problems it solves, how it works, and how to quickly gain value from it. | Intertwining design and development practice, this book incorporates numerous examples based on actual projects to illustrate the application of domain-driven design to real-world software development. | Building on Eric Evans’ seminal book, Vaughn Vernon couples guided approaches to implementation with modern architectures, highlighting the importance and value of focusing on the business domain while balancing technical considerations. | Helps business decision-makers and technical team members clearly understand their strategic problems through collaboration and identify optimal architectural approaches. |
| What Will You Learn | The methods easy pictographic language, scenario-based modeling techniques, workshop format, and relationship to other modeling methods and how it can solve many common problems. | Each core DDD technique for building better software. Never buries you in detail–it focuses on what you need to know to get results. | Design best practices, experience-based techniques, and fundamental principles that facilitate the development of software projects facing complex domains. | Practical DDD techniques through examples from familiar domains and how to use DDD within diverse architectures, including Hexagonal, SOA, Rest, CQRS, Event-Driven, and Fabric/Grid-Based. | How to construct well-designed monoliths that are maintainable and extensible, and gradually redesign and reimplement even the most tangled legacy systems into truly effective microservices. |
Product description
Amazon Review
The authors have come up with some ingenious ways to solve some common vexations among object-oriented programmers. Want to build a page-layout program that embeds inline images among characters of various sizes? How about building a program that converts files of one format to another? Chances are, some programmer already has thought of a better solution than you will and the recipes you need are here. Solutions are presented in generalised diagrams of data and logic structures. The idea is that you can take the concepts presented here and adapt them--in whatever language you use--to your individual situation. You may have to read some of the chapters several times before you fully understand them, but when you find a solution in this book, it will make your job easier and your results more elegant. --Jake Bond
From the Back Cover
Capturing a wealth of experience about the design of object-oriented software, four top-notch designers present a catalog of simple and succinct solutions to commonly occurring design problems. Previously undocumented, these 23 patterns allow designers to create more flexible, elegant, and ultimately reusable designs without having to rediscover the design solutions themselves.
The authors begin by describing what patterns are and how they can help you design object-oriented software. They then go on to systematically name, explain, evaluate, and catalog recurring designs in object-oriented systems. With Design Patterns as your guide, you will learn how these important patterns fit into the software development process, and how you can leverage them to solve your own design problems most efficiently.
Each pattern describes the circumstances in which it is applicable, when it can be applied in view of other design constraints, and the consequences and trade-offs of using the pattern within a larger design. All patterns are compiled from real systems and are based on real-world examples. Each pattern also includes code that demonstrates how it may be implemented in object-oriented programming languages like C++ or Smalltalk.
0201633612B07092001
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Capturing a wealth of experience about the design of object-oriented software, four top-notch designers present a catalog of
simple and succinct solutions to commonly occurring design problems. Previously undocumented, these 23 patterns allow
designers to create more flexible, elegant, and ultimately reusable designs without having to rediscover the design solutions themselves.
The authors begin by describing what patterns are and how they can help you design object-oriented software. They then go on to systematically name,
explain, evaluate, and catalog recurring designs in object-oriented systems. With Design Patterns as your guide, you will learn how these important patterns fit
into the software development process, and how you can leverage them to solve your own design problems most efficiently.
Each pattern describes the circumstances in which it is applicable, when it can be applied in view of other design constraints, and the consequences and
trade-offs of using the pattern within a larger design. All patterns are compiled from real systems and are based on real-world examples. Each pattern also
includes code that demonstrates how it may be implemented in object-oriented programming languages like C++ or Smalltalk. Table of Contents
Preface
Foreword
Guide to Readers
1. Introduction
What Is a Design Pattern? * Design Patterns in Smalltalk MVC * Describing Design Patterns * The Catalog of Design Patterns * Organizing the Catalog *
How Design Patterns Solve Design Problems * How to Select a Design Pattern * How to Use a Design Pattern
2. A Case Study: Designing a Document Editor
Design Problems * Document Structure * Formatting * Embellishing the User Interface * Supporting Multiple Look-and-Feel Standards * Supporting
Multiple Window Systems * User Operations * Spelling Checking and Hyphenation * Summary
Design Pattern Catalog
3. Creational Patterns
Abstract Factory * Builder * Factory Method * Prototype * Singleton * Discussion of Creational Patterns
4. Structural Pattern
Adapter * Bridge * Composite * Decorator * Facade * Flyweight * Proxy * Discussion of Structural Patterns
5. Behavioral Patterns
Chain of Responsibility * Command * Interpreter * Iterator * Mediator * Memento * Observer * State * Strategy * Template Method * I have tested the scripts both on LINUX (Redhat) and on AIX, and some scripts have also been tested on Data Generals. I hope you enjoy the book, not only as a learning tool but also as a reference tool. Enjoy and have fun. Stand-by to stand-to. Any comments, or just to say hello, e-mail me at dtansley@my-Deja.com.
Product details
- Publisher : Addison Wesley; 1st edition (31 Oct. 1994)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 416 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0201633612
- ISBN-13 : 978-0201633610
- Dimensions : 23.65 x 19.35 x 2.64 cm
- Best Sellers Rank: 86,381 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 50 in Amazon Online Shopping
- 55 in Mechanical & Material Engineering
- 164 in Introduction to Programming
- Customer reviews:
About the authors

Erich Gamma (born 1961 in Zürich) is a Swiss computer scientist and co-author of the influential software engineering textbook, Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software. He co-wrote the JUnit software testing framework with Kent Beck and led the design of the Eclipse platform's Java Development Tools (JDT). He also worked on the IBM Rational Jazz project.
He joined the Microsoft Visual Studio team in 2011 and leads a development lab in Zürich, Switzerland that has developed the "Monaco" suite of components for browser-based development, found in products such as Visual Studio Online, Visual Studio Code, Azure Mobile Services, Azure Web Sites, and the Office 365 Development tools.
Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

John Matthew Vlissides (August 2, 1961 - November 24, 2005) was a software scientist known mainly as one of the four authors (referred to as the Gang of Four) of the book Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software. Vlissides referred to himself as "#4 of the Gang of Four and wouldn't have it any other way".
Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read book recommendations and more.

Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read book recommendations and more.
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Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonCustomers say
Customers find the book easy to read and a great reference for software development. They appreciate the clear explanations of design patterns with code examples. The book is useful for designing functionality and object model diagrams. It's recommended by programming professionals as a must-read for software developers and a well-known classic in software engineering.
AI-generated from the text of customer reviews
Customers find the book easy to read and a great reference for programmers. They find it an unavoidable read for senior OOP developers. The book provides clear explanations of design patterns in a straightforward manner.
"This book is the original and best. Yes, it is pretty dry - but you don't read it like a novel...." Read more
"...other reviewers already described why this is a must-read for any senior OOP developer...." Read more
"...to where I think it should always have been, an accepted classic containing great wisdom...." Read more
"...Just bare in mind that practicality and readability (particularly in the case of your successors) should trump "correctness" in all but the..." Read more
Customers find the book's design patterns useful for software development and object-oriented design. It provides comprehensive descriptions and examples, capturing common idioms as patterns. The example code helps clarify what is intended. However, some readers feel the book is designed as a reference book, yet the patterns are not in C++.
"...and even better use/implement, without problems, OOP concepts like polymorphism, abstraction, encapsulation, inheritance etc, and you want to go a..." Read more
"...The descriptions are comprehensive and the examples help clarify what is intended, albeit using C++ as it was written in the '90s...." Read more
"...The way the four authors distilled their experience, explained the abstract knowledge, demonstrated the use cases and categorised the patterns are..." Read more
"...Design patterns are not difficult and books like Head First Design Patterns are better introductions to Designs Patterns than the GoF book...." Read more
Customers find the book useful for software development and object-oriented design. They say it's a must-read for programmers and a perfect reference guide. The book is recommended by programming professionals and is a well-known classic in the field.
"Being the well-known classics of software engineering, this book doesn’t need another review...." Read more
"The Gang of Four is already well-known in Software Industry, with many of the patterns introduced in this book are very popular in real world..." Read more
"Easy to pick up and perfect as a reference guide...." Read more
"...to design patterns somewhat limiting, this book is a must-have on any programmers bookshelf, if for no other reason that to enable discourse with..." Read more
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Top reviews from United Kingdom
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- Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 31 August 2012If you are total newbie with OOP programming this book isn't for you. If you know and understand and even better use/implement, without problems, OOP concepts like polymorphism, abstraction, encapsulation, inheritance etc, and you want to go a step forward in your programming skills, then this book is for you.
Not only for stand-alone desktop programs or mobile applications but for web applications also, you will find Design Patterns useful for your code. You will understand how to solve some basic logic problems with design patterns that will render your code reusable and easy to adapt it to any program you make.
- Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 24 September 2024Being the well-known classics of software engineering, this book doesn’t need another review. It is a must to have in a collection of any serious practitioner in this field.
- Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 7 August 2016This book is the original and best. Yes, it is pretty dry - but you don't read it like a novel. Simply scan through the various patterns so you know that they exist, then when the need comes up and you think "I'm sure there is a pattern that could be adapted to solve this problem" - you go back and read in depth to refresh your memory.
Every team who use object-orientation should have a copy in the office to refer to.
If you want a softer read, there is a Head First book on design patterns - but I would still recommend having a copy of this book to refer to when you want to implement and adapt a pattern in real life.
- Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 27 October 2018I would recommend this book to everyone who wants to further their knowledge about general OOP design patterns. This book is a well-known classic, not without a reason. I believe other reviewers already described why this is a must-read for any senior OOP developer. However, there is also a few things I didn't like about this book.
- Programming languages. I do vast majority of my coding in Java, sometimes I code in another JVM languages. This book provides examples in C++ and/or Smalltalk. Even more, this book was written before Java was a thing! This has to have an impact on how easy to follow are some of the examples. If you write Java 8 code, I bet you know what is the difference between external and internal iterator. At the same time, C++ friends will probably be less obvious to you, and the concept of e.g. enum-based singletons will not be mentioned at all. If only someone could write this book once again, but focus on Java-centric point of view.
- GUI-based examples. For nearly all the patterns, there is a GUI-related example. I am deeply alergic to GUI development and would appreciate more examples relating to backend functionalities.
- Didn't we evolve since then? Many of these design patterns are explicitly targetting challenges around excessive memory utilisation and other past limitations. We can do better now. Same constraints still exist, but are applicable to a very different extent. I can see people blindly following some of these patterns today in the field, with very little reflection upon the actual problem they are trying to solve. Today good programming is frequently not about making the application consume less memory, but about making it easier to understand and change. The problems we are trying to solve have changed, therefore the solutions we apply need to change as well. Keep it in mind while reading this book - not all of that is of equal value today, as it was when this book was first published. This takes us swiftly to the next point, which is...
- The pattern catalogue. While many of these design patterns are still valuable these days, there may be others which are more valuable. Just compare and contrast the builder pattern, as described in this book vs the one described many years later by Joshua Bloch.
My recommendation - read this book if you haven't done it already. Learn all the good things, just don't forget the world has moved on since then.
- Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 17 September 2023Almost 30 years on, this is still the baseline book for design patterns. The descriptions are comprehensive and the examples help clarify what is intended, albeit using C++ as it was written in the '90s. There should be no problem implementing the ideas in a modern incarnation (indeed the STL encompasses some ideas), or in other OOP languages for that matter.
- Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 4 April 2021The Gang of Four is already well-known in Software Industry, with many of the patterns introduced in this book are very popular in real world projects. But that's not the main point of why you need to read this. The way the four authors distilled their experience, explained the abstract knowledge, demonstrated the use cases and categorised the patterns are classic! Reading this book is not only lot of fun, but also really enlighted in terms of deeply understanding why you could do better in the past and how you actually do better in the future. Last but not least, this is far beyond a one-time book, it'll be your patterns dictionary in the future.
- Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 16 July 2023Easy to pick up and perfect as a reference guide. Using these patterns in your work will make it easier for yourself and others to get up to speed when you come back to it later
- Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 9 October 2010I've worked in the IT industry exclusively since 2006 when I graduated from university. This book was required reading for the Design Patterns module I elected to do. Back to 2010 and I've found myself doing more OO and re-factoring of some complex code bases. I picked up my copy and realised just how out-dated the examples are, especially for developers using Java / C#. The examples might be more relevant to C++ developers but I find the book really heavy going and quite hard to digest.
Design patterns are not difficult and books like Head First Design Patterns are better introductions to Designs Patterns than the GoF book. Unfortunately the Head First series does not cover all the patterns in the GoF and the Head First book is not designed to be a reference book. That said I remember much more of what I read when compared to this text.
Unfortunately there is no alternative that provides essential coverage of some of the most common patterns used day to day.
In short if your new to patterns and have a limited budget go for the Head First Book, while not a reference its a much gentler introduction.
Top reviews from other countries
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Joao AntunesReviewed in Brazil on 17 October 20245.0 out of 5 stars Ótima compra
Ótima compra
Iatrophus LaurotiReviewed in the United States on 2 September 20225.0 out of 5 stars An absolute masterpiece even in 2022 - Evergreen Principles of Software Architecture
This book characterizes the kind of thinking that moves you from the low-level 'small' view of a software developer to the high level long-term view of a software architect.
While entry-level and junior developers may spent hours arguing fruitlessly over whether OOP is dead or alive, or whether functional programming is better or worse, most senior engineers and software architects are able to use many different paradigms. They understand that these patterns are deeper than the paradigm they are implemented in.
They understand that the concepts and ideas underlying these design patterns cannot and will not ever die because they express evergreen solutions to dealing with evolving software systems.
Javascript made the prototype pattern its object model. Generators (and coroutines) that make async/await possible are often implemented as combinations of Factories and Iterators. The Observer pattern underlies almost every single reactive UI framework and most micro-service architectures. Decorators have become mainstays in most languages, inversion of control (IoC) is crucial for dependency injection patterns (Angular, etc.), and on and on... In short... these patterns are used absolutely everywhere, yes, even today.
Basically, anyone who says these patterns are dead is either profoundly confused or unaware of how prevalent they are underneath everything they do.
For those who say you don't need to know the patterns themselves because they are implemented as language features in modern languages... I would say that coders are generally afraid to use what they don't understand. Have you ever seen someone try to do reactive state management well who didn't understand the Observer pattern? It's not pretty. Moreover, there is no language that offers every single one of these patterns as first-class objects, and certainly no language that has them tailor-made for your use case and your business logic.
Understanding the problems that these design patterns solve will help you design better software systems no matter what language or framework you use. Understanding how they work is crucial to using them well and not taking the pros and cons of these abstractions for granted.
Yes, the examples are in C++ and quite old, and I wish they updated this book to implement these patterns in a newer language like Python, Typescript, Go, Carbon, Kotlin, or C#... but even this slight deficiency doesn't justify taking a star away. Every other part of the book is complete gold. It should be updated, but even this version is well-worth the money.
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Yoli morenoReviewed in Spain on 1 December 20245.0 out of 5 stars Buena compra
Me lo recomendaron unos compañeros de profesion y me ha parecido buenisimo, lo compré de segunda mano y vino en perfectas condiciones tal cual se describia, gracias a esto pagué la mitad de su precio
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UQI8Reviewed in Turkey on 11 November 20245.0 out of 5 stars iyi
iyi ürün
KateReviewed in Canada on 4 August 20215.0 out of 5 stars Must-have book for developers
This book is one of the must-have books for developers.
I enjoy reading this book, because design patterns are very useful in lots of various situations, especially to improve the code quality!
This book is one of the must-have books for developers.5.0 out of 5 stars Must-have book for developers
Kate
Reviewed in Canada on 4 August 2021
I enjoy reading this book, because design patterns are very useful in lots of various situations, especially to improve the code quality!
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