Since I had read the GOF book "Design Patterns : Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software" before I purchased this book, "visual basic design patterns" by Cooper, I was pretty familiar with the patterns and the solutions for the 23 patterns outlined by the GoF. However, Cooper manages to make his book hard to follow by not including complete code samples and by literally jumping to different examples to illustrate the same pattern. The reader is never really gets a chance to "get in the groove" with the author. It seems to me to be like a poorly edited movie with too many unneeded jump cuts in the middle of the same scene.

If you've never tried to code up the patterns in VB before ( as I hadn't), you absolutely **MUST** open and look at the completed sample code on the cd while reading the book to comprehend and "grok" the VB solutions.

Interestingly, I had no trouble at all reading and comprehending the majority of the GoF book, "Design Patterns : Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software" on a first and only read through it... ...So I know it's not an issue of basic comprehension with this VB pattern book, it's just poorly organized.

Truth be told, what this book needs is to be re-edited a couple of times for clarity. It has great potential, and but it forces you to run the cd while reading the text to follow the completed patterns.

That is all well and good, but in my opinion the text in a book should stand alone. This principal is used in all the other programming books I have read. (over 150) This is particularly bad if you are trying to read the book while **NOT** propped up in front of a computer. --- i.e. at the airport or on the back porch at home.

n.