Recently I have been reading and enjoying Robert Hanmer’s new book, Pattern-Oriented Software Architecture for Dummies. Disclaimer: In the past I have shied away from the books for dummy series, except when I wanted to learn about something clearly out of the realm of my expertise. Even then, just the notion of reading a book for dummies has stopped me from several dummy book purchases. Good grief! I didn’t know what I have been missing.

This book is not theoretical or dry. The prose is a pleasure to read. And it goes into way more depth than you might expect. Instead of simplifying the Patterns of Software Architecture book that is also on my bookshelf, I’d say it adds and complements it with clear explanation of benefits and liabilities of each pattern, step-by-step guides to implementing each architectural pattern and more. As an extra bonus, the first two parts of the book contain some of the clearest writing about what patterns are and how they can be used or discovered that I’ve seen.

I wish Bob Hanmer would write more patterns for the Dummy series. He knows his subject. He has good, solid examples. And he doesn’t insult your intelligence (In contrast, I find that the Head First books are definitely not my cup of tea…I don’t want to play games or have patterns trivialized). Bob has an easy, engaging style of writing. The graphics and illustrations are compelling In fact, I reproduced a couple of the graphics about finding patterns in a lecture, with credit to Bob of course, in a lecture I gave last week to my enterprise application design students.

This is a good book. If you’ve wondered about software architecture patterns and styles, read this book. Buy it. And tell your software buddies about it, too.