| Patterns are an interesting topic that has already been thoroughly discussed. The book that
originally started the pattern phenomenon was Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-
Oriented Software by Erich Gamma et al. (Boston: Addison-Wesley, 1995). At the time the book
was published, it presented new ideas and concepts. Now it has become the reference book
of design patterns, and the described design patterns have become the basis of all sorts of
applications.
This book is an explanation of design patterns as applied to the .NET 2.0 Framework. Some
of the patterns are from Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software, and
others are from other sources. The focus of this book is not to explicitly define the patterns, but
to illustrate the patterns in the context of using them with a programming language like C#,
because the original design patterns were illustrated using C++, and there are major differences
between that language and .NET and C#.
In addition to patterns and object-oriented principles, this book is about learning to read code
like a musician reads sheet music. If you think about it, musicians express their thoughts using
a notation that only musicians can understand. A score, which represents the music to be played,
looks like a bunch of scratch marks to the untrained eye. Yet to musicians, it is Bach, Mozart,
AC/DC, or Eminem, and makes perfect sense. Musicians, when reading a score, will know
when to play their musical instruments, and what emotions are being generated at that moment. |
