---
title: "Head-First books from Oreilly (and free sample chapters)"
url: "https://osherove.com/blog/2004/11/27/head-first-books-from-oreilly-and-free-sample-chapters.md"
canonical: "https://osherove.com/blog/2004/11/27/head-first-books-from-oreilly-and-free-sample-chapters.html"
published: "2004-11-27T22:21:00"
updated: "2004-11-27T22:21:00"
tags: ["Free book chapters"]
author: "Roy Osherove"
description: "Sure, the title sounds kinda nasty, but it's not. OK. I gotta admit, the new oreilly \"Head-First\" book series looks awesome. Thanks to Oleg for pointing to it. And yeah, the sample chapters do look amazingly as if Rory…"
usage: "Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page)."
license: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
---

# Head-First books from Oreilly (and free sample chapters)

By Roy Osherove November 27, 2004 In [Free book chapters](https://osherove.com/blog/category/free-book-chapters)

**Historical article** · Originally published November 27, 2004; technical details may be outdated.

Sure, the title sounds kinda nasty, but it's not.

OK. I gotta admit, the new oreilly "Head-First" book series looks awesome. [Thanks to Oleg](http://www.tkachenko.com/blog/archives/000350.html) for pointing to it.

And yeah, the sample chapters do look amazingly as if [Rory](http://www.neopoleon.com/) had done all the artwork using his tablet PC and imagination. Nice work. Check out the [head-first patterns book chapter](http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/hfdesignpat/chapter/) about the decorator pattern or the [other samples](http://headfirst.oreilly.com/). It's pretty cool.

Speaking of books, [Moshe Eshel points to several online book resources](http://geekswithblogs.net/meshel/archive/2004/11/25/16004.aspx). I personally am subscribed to [safari books online](http://www.safaribooksonline.com/) which is pretty cool.

## More in Free book chapters

[All posts in Free book chapters](https://osherove.com/blog/category/free-book-chapters)

- Mar 19, 2005

    ### [\[Free Book\]Coding Slave](https://osherove.com/blog/2005/3/19/free-bookcoding-slave.html)

- Jan 11, 2005

    ### [\[Free book\] .Net in samples](https://osherove.com/blog/2005/1/11/free-book-net-in-samples.html)

- Apr 5, 2004

    ### [Sample chapter from "The Visual Basic .NET Programming Language" available](https://osherove.com/blog/2004/4/5/sample-chapter-from-quotthe-visual-basic-net-programming-lan.html)

- Mar 31, 2004

    ### [VS.Net Database Projects - learn to use them (Sample chapter included)](https://osherove.com/blog/2004/3/31/vsnet-database-projects-learn-to-use-them-sample-chapter-inc.html)


---

## About the author

**Roy Osherove**: Senior Solutions Architect at AWS working on AI for production and AI-driven development; author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership, with about 20 years of consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery.

### Sites

- [RobotPaper](https://robotpaper.ai/): This blog: AI patterns and anti-patterns, AI and coding agents, and engineering leadership.
- [osherove.com](https://osherove.com): Roy's personal site. Author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership; consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery, plus about 20 years of blog posts.
- [The Art of Unit Testing](https://www.artofunittesting.com): The Art of Unit Testing, 3rd Edition (Manning): readable, maintainable, trustworthy unit tests, plus TDD workshops in C#, JavaScript, Java and Kotlin.
- [5whys.com](https://www.5whys.com): Roy's writing on software team leadership: self-organizing teams, surviving chaos, learning mode and the Elastic Leadership model.
- [Pipeline Driven](https://pipelinedriven.org): Continuous delivery and DevOps practices: build patterns, pipeline-friendly testing, DevOps metrics and enterprise DevOps.
- [Elastic Leadership](https://www.elasticleadership.com): Elastic Leadership, Roy's framework for software team leaders (survival, learning and self-organizing modes).

### Social

- X: https://x.com/royosherove
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/osherove/

### Contact

- Contact form: https://forms.gle/jQSx5KoXvrVA1JCK7

### License

Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page). License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/