Based on Rafe’s suggestion I picked up O’Reilly’s “Head First Design Patterns” and it was well worth reading.

Rafe had this to say on the book:

…So I’m in the process of reading the book, and I rate it as the best computer book I’ve ever read in the “instructional tool” category. I generally find it difficult to learn new things from books, I prefer to take a more hands on approach that involves tearing into code and looking at documentation when I have to. This book has been the exception to the rule — it’s designed to apply the most innovative thinking on how humans learn, and the approach is effective. The one danger the book runs into is appearing to be gimmicky, but if you can get past that, I think you’ll be impressed.

While I won’t call it the best computer book I’ve ever read in the “instructional tool” category (that honor would go to “Effective Java” by Joshua Bloch) it comes very close. Long term it might supercede it if for me as while the book may have its examples written in Java, I can immediately see how it applies to work I do in other environments like Flash and PHP.

Update: Rafe stopped by to say: “I loved Joshua Bloch’s book too. I just didn’t think of it as the same kind of book as Head First Design Patterns, since it’s a collection of best practices rather than a book that sets out to teach you about something step by step.”

Makes sense. These two books aren’t truely birds of a feather.

Now I’m off reading Lawrence Lessig’s “Free Culture” and Friends of Ed’s Kris Besley, Sham Bhangal’s Foundation Flash MX 2004. Ya see – I’ve learned Flash backwards. Actionscript first, UI second. Weird, but if you knew the projects I worked on – you’d understand.