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Merry Xmas and Patterns

Or just a happy holiday :) Some of my fellow work devs are taking a well earned break over the holidays.  Beyond the normal bank holidays I will be cutting the slab working out a few ideas and concepts ready for everbodies return.

Wayne Allen left a comment in my previous post on patterns I wanted to cover that here. Wayne made a few interesting points.
  • Patterns are moving beyond a hot topic to assumed knowedge
  • Patterns are a way of communicating a design
  • Pattterns are a way of thinking
All valid points. I see Patterns as all these things but I would not say that all developers think in Pattern terms nor know all the patterns to say to all other devs, I code to these patterns. I would say that a learning curve still exists and by learning devs take a view on a design and on the code the develop. By learning devs can see where a design fits and how they might refactor code to that pattern. In BPUF to Agile, patterns just let you see a way of shaping some code beyond the means normally available. It would be great to see some tool support in patterns, prehaps just some simple templates to provide a basis to code to.
Posted: Dec 23 2004, 07:26 PM by astopford | with 10 comment(s)
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Comments

Charles Chen said:

try

http://www.dofactory.com/Patterns/Patterns.aspx

"Patterns are moving beyond a hot topic to assumed knowedge"

Far from it. When I was at Factiva, a few of my team member's were *really* into design patterns and really worked to implement what I would describe as an elegant OOP solution. On the other hand, the self proclaimed "architect" (by seniority) of the team had no idea what design patterns were. Ugh, it was so frustrating working with the guy; every time we'd have a discussion on the design of some component, he would walk by, inject some bs like he knew it all, and we would do it his way, even though it was clearly *NOT* the best way of doing it. What's worse is that he had no desire to learn about design patterns, good OOP practices, or UML. I don't know how many times I sent the guy links, but he never looked at them. One of the team members even purchased several books including the "Gang of Four" Design Patterns book...he never cracked it open once.

He would hand us these quasi-UML diagrams that used UML notation in incorrect fashion. You can guess how much confusion that caused. Bottom line: design patterns are still a ways off from being "assumed knowledge". Design patterns should be one of the first courses they teach in any college level computer science curriculum. It's entirely absent in some curriculums and, in my case, was relegated to a short blip in one of the highest level CS courses which was not required for the major (meaning not many people in my graduating class were even exposed to it).

Sad, but true.
# December 23, 2004 3:54 PM

css said:

College curriculums are (usually) part of a big beauracracy which move slowly. Patterns are still a new thing to explore in my school's CS program. Of course it would help if some more of the profs had actual real industry experience in the last 5 years. I know one of my clasess (this is a grad level class) is the only class to ever discuss design patterns because I forced the prof to do it. We only spent 2-3 weeks on the topic at the end of the semester which is definately not enough time.
# December 23, 2004 4:04 PM

css said:

# December 23, 2004 4:04 PM

Charles Chen said:

I would also like to add another bullet to the above, which is the point that design patterns are more than just a way of communicating a design, more than just a way of thinking; if you think about it, each pattern is a kind of partial, generic solution to some problem that other's in the industry have encountered in the past.

In that sense, they are a starting point in solving common problems encountered in building software. A familiarity with the standard design patterns can help you avoid pitfalls that you would encounter if you were to try to go about "discovering" them for the first time.

As for college curriculums, I really feel that design patterns should be taught alongside of an introductory programming course (along with software engineering). I've never understood why software engineering (at Rutgers, this was a course focused on _how_ to develop software, how to work in teams, how to manage projects, how to write documentation, etc.) is a senior level elective.
# December 23, 2004 4:21 PM

Wayne Allen said:

OK, in my universe design patterns are assumed knowledge. Certainly I know of developers who have never heard of them, but they aren't what I consider to be "senior".

Design patterns are _a_ general solution to a general problem. My issue with teaching people to code to patterns is that they don't know why they are using the pattern. If you do know when to use a pattern (and more importantly when not to) then patterns are just shorthand for communicating design intent.

Tool support for patterns in IMHO a "bad" thing. I've seen to much code that has every GoF pattern in it because "patterns are good".
# December 23, 2004 5:12 PM

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