Urgh. What a book! I'm finally done with this, and only because I decided I'm done and not because I'd read every page of the book. Head First's books are usually a pleasure to read (or at least they were) because things are written in such simple terms that you know you can understand anything. Either their books have changed or I have, because this particular book was just too (too) simple to retain your attention.
That design is a subject that draws me to computer science makes me want to learn how to get better at it. It's always a pleasure to see Norvig's clinical, clearly and carefully crafted programs, and to learn the art that is clearly inherent in the task of writing programs would be great. Sadly, I've taken a strong dislike to huge, chunky classes being thrust into your face as introductions to the problem of design. Head First's book had a lot to say on what I would call pseudo science (or soft science) like requirements and use cases, but I think it did little justice to exactly how to design well.
Reading the book, I couldn't help but think that most of what I was reading was just fluff created to justify the use of buzzwords like "Domain analysis", "Requirement specification", etc. These things seem like very obvious things to do (a to-do list anyone?) and makes me question the value of design patterns and excessive OOPing as I'd call it.
With this book, I'm done for now with this field (I had planned on reading Design Patterns earlier) and instead will move on to something more "concrete".
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