Thinking in Patterns 2004

Revision 0.9, 5-20-2003 (This version contains the material that will be used in the Crested Butte seminar; see http://www.mindview.net/Seminars/ThinkingInPatterns/)Genesis of this bookThe more that I worked towards the deadline for Thinking in Java, 2nd edition, the more I started to feel that either the schedule or the quality would be compromised. However, when I broke the "Polymorphism" chapter into two chapters based on my experience giving the seminar (the single chapter produced a lecture that was too long by far), it reminded me of the roots of that book, which was the Hands-On Java seminar. The biggest bottleneck in the book was the one chapter that is not part of the seminar, which was the last one ("Design Patterns"). In addition to being in very rough form and promising a tremendous amount of work — and research, which always takes more time than I think it will — to get in shape, this chapter kept getting bigger and really deserves its own book. So that's what I have done — pulled the Design Patterns chapter out so that it can be turned into a separate book. Because it's on the Web, this is not really taking anything away from the reader, and it means that the schedule becomes far more practical. I will be posting information here and in the newsletter as this project develops.