Patterns

These books cover patterns in their various guises.

Implementation Patterns (Kent Beck)

Reviewed by: Ed Sykes and Seb Rose

Whilst there are many books about design patterns, this gem from Kent Beck looks at the patterns we use everyday to structure our code, handle exceptions, name classes and methods, etc. If you ever wanted to get inside the head of Kent Beck, but stand little chance of pairing with him, then this is your best opportunity.

Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture (Martin Fowler)

Reviewed by: Garry Lancaster

Aside from the Gang of Four, the patterns in this book are probably the most well known. If you find yourself hearing about Data Mappers, Gateways and Service Layers, then this is a good source to find out more.

Pattern-Oriented Software Architecture Volume 4 (Frank Buschmann, Kevlin Henney & Douglas C. Schmidt)

Fowler's patterns book covers more of the data access side of an enterprise, whereas this contains patterns that you're more likely to find in a more diverse distributed system. There are various patterns on concurrency and resource management from the earlier POSA books in one place for easier reference.