· Makes object-oriented design principles accessible to beginning students.
· Examples are carefully chosen to make design patterns easy to remember.
· Pedagogy to support student learning is highlighted throughout the text and includes:
  o Special Topics introduce optional background material or advanced subjects
  o Design Patterns are presented in a standard format along with appropriate context for use, the solution, and a UML diagram of the pattern elements
  o Notes highlight important or interesting material
  o Internet notes contain links to further information including locations for downloadable programming tools, documentation, and articles related to chapter topics
  o Tips explain good programming practices and help students avoid common errors.
· The author's experience as a programmer helps readers appreciate the value of object-oriented design principles in their programming; his experience as a teacher gives them a context for understanding and applying these ideas that is geared to their level.
· Concepts such as interfaces, inner classes, reflection, and multithreading give readers an introduction to advanced Java language concepts.
· Introduces data structures as needed, so the book may be used before or after a formal course in data structures.
· Uses the Swing user interface toolkit and Java collections library to illustrate design patterns and how they may be applied.
· Chapter 1 serves as a crash course in Java for readers who know C++.
· Horstmann integrates the use of tools such as BlueJ, javadoc, and Junit, as well as other experimental tools.
· Presents and utilizes the most commonly used subset of the UML notation, starting in Chapter 2.
· The Capstone chapter includes the development of a graph editor framework and its specialization to a UML class diagram editor. Readers not only see how design principles relate to the implementation of the editor, but also better understand the easy-to-use UML editor, Violet, provided by the author.