This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Why a Workbook?
No matter how much you read about doing something, you won't feel as though you know it until you do it. This is true partially because until you exercise the knowledge you gain from a book, you won't encounter subtleties, and you won't grapple with alternative approaches. You won't feel confident about design patterns until you apply them to some real challenges.
The problem with learning through experience is that you can do a lot of damage as you learn. You can't apply patterns in production code before you are confident in your own skills. But you need to start applying patterns to gain confidence. What a conundrum! The solution is to practice on example problems where mistakes are valuable but painless.
Each chapter in this workbook begins with a short introduction and then sets up a series of challenges for you to solve. After you come up with a solution, you can compare your solution to one given in Appendix B, Solutions, starting on page 359. The solution in the book may take a different slant from your solution or may provide you with some other insight.
You probably can't go overboard in how hard you work to come up with answers to the challenges in this book. If you consult other books, work with a colleague, and write sample code to check out your solution, terrific! You will never regret investing your time and energy in learning how to apply design patterns.
A danger lurks in the solutions that this book provides. If you flip to the solution immediately after reading a challenge, you will not gain much from this book. The solutions in this book can do you more harm than good if you don't first create your own solutions.