Coding Horror: Head First Design Patterns
Filling 593 pages with rah-rah pattern talk, and then tacking this critical guidance on at the end of the book is downright irresponsible. This advice should be in 72 point blinking Comic Sans on the very first page.
Beginning developers never met a pattern or an object they didn't like. Encouraging them to experiment with patterns is like throwing gasoline on a fire. And yet that's exactly what this book does. Page 597 outlines how therapeutic it is for beginners to abuse patterns:
Quite possibly the first time I disagree with Jeff.
-BrendaN