This book is easy to review because by itself it is almost useless, but with the appropriate shelf of references it is invaluable.
This book is easy to review because by itself it is almost useless, but with the appropriate shelf of references it is invaluable. Let me provide you an example and I think you will get the point. Suppose someone tells you to use the Acyclic Visitor Pattern. You look that up in this book and you will get:
Behavioural [Martin98], PloPD3, 93-103Allow new functions to be added to class hierarchies without affecting those hierarchies and without creating the troublesome dependency cycles inherent to VISITOR ?179
Now you can follow the internal reference to page 179 to find a similarly brief entry for the Visitor Pattern. However if you have a good library of reference books you will be able to follow the first reference to pages 93-103 of Programming Languages of Program Design 3 where you will find a detailed discussion and further references.
To save space I chose a relatively simple entry (there are even simpler ones). Other entries will include relevant urls, related patterns and a citation of one or more experience reports.
With the right reference library this would be a valuable addition, but be warned, the bibliography covers 18 pages. Fortunately half a dozen books will cover about 50% of the references.
