Technical Books: Patterns

A Timeless Way of Building; Christopher Alexander; Hardcover.

It's about architecture, not software, but it's still a "should-have", as an introduction to the philosophy behind patterns.

A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction; Christopher Alexander, Sara Ishikawa, Murray Silverstein; Hardcover.

"The origin of the design pattern concept. A must-have."

Pattern-Oriented Software Architecture : A System of Patterns; Frank Buschmann, Regine Meunier, Hans Rohnert, pet Sommerlad; Hardcover.

UML Distilled : Applying the Standard Object Modeling Language; Martin Fowler, Kendall Scott; Paperback.

According to the Unified Modeling Language (UML) page, this book "provides a concise introduction to the UML within the context of object-oriented analysis and design."

Patterns of Software: Tales From the Software Community; Richard P. Gabriel; Hardcover.

"Philosophical, good background; only part 1 is of interest."

Design Patterns; Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson, and John Vlissides; Hardcover.

The first book to apply patterns to software, and the one that started it all. In the pattern community, the authors are referred to as the Gang of Four, or GoF.

Design Patterns for Object-Oriented Software Development; Wolfgang Pree; Hardcover.

"Somewhat like the Gang of Four's book, but more quickly written."

Pitfalls of Object-Oriented Development; Bruce F. Webster; Paperback.

"As far as I know it's the only collection of "negative patterns", i.e. things that you should NOT do, each one described on two pages, covering everything from OO concepts, analyses, design, to implementation, reuse, organization, management and politics. [No source code at all.] But it has a commented bibliography."