After last week book review on Martin Fowler’s Refactoring, I’d like to review another book, more oriented towards patterns and refactoring.

Content and opinions

First, this book could be seen as a follow up of Refactoring, as almost all the described processes use steps from it. The first chapters explain what to expect from refactoring (how it affect software architecture), patterns and how to detect code that needs refactoring. The catalog is split like the original Design Patterns book in different categories (Creation, Simplification, Generaliation, Protection, Accumulation or Utilities), and each of them is described as in the GoF book (which suits me quite well).

The code language is Java, so it may be sometimes difficult to find the equivalent construction in your favorite language, but it is doable if you known Java basics.

Conclusion

This book quotes several times Martin Fowler, but this is not related to the fact that this book is in the “Fowler signature” collection of the publisher. Refactoring to Patterns addresses what Refactoring couldn’t and goes firther, without imposing, just by suggesting.