"If you would like to get a better grasp on doing some high-level software design, UML Distilled turns out to be a much better book than I had anticipated. I expected a dry tutorial of the UML notation, but it is thankfully much more than this..."
"...some information and diagrams were added as a waste of time..."
"I was introduced to programming with Kernighan and Ritchie's C book. I loved reading that book. It's a classic because it's so concise, easy to read, and practical. A lot of my interest in the field came from just this one book...UML Distilled is the OO design analog of K&R C. I tore through this book in about a week. It's actually a fun read which is an extreme rarity for anything computer science related...."
"Everything is great and Fowler's advice throughout the book is incredibly useful for when applying UML to the real world, however I feel like this book is missing a section/chapter with a project where we can follow a back-to-back system design from a world-class software engineer such as the author..."
"...About half-way through I quit reading the book because I wasn't learning very much. Here is the main problem. Fowler presents concepts using high-level, theoretical and sometimes incomplete terminology and doesn't illustrate with good examples...."
"...Intelligently written and quite readable so far after reading the first chapters and skimming others. I like the practical advice of using only those bits that help your own productivity and dropping those that don't...
"If you want to use UML and don't want to sift through 600 page books of minute details on diagrams that will only get used once in a decade, then this book is for you. Martin Fowler's book beats UML down into the most commonly used diagrams used. It is not a complete reference, but if you want a great reference of the important facts of the important (most used) diagrams to help you get up and going "now", then this is the book!"