How to study design patterns

Question

I have read around 4-5 books on design patterns  but still I don t feel I have come closer to intermediate level in design patterns       How should I go studying design patterns   Is there any good book for design patterns   I know this will come only with experience but there must be some way to master these

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Ask yourself these questions   What do they do   What do they decouple couple   When should you use them   When should you not use them   What missing language feature would make them go away   What technical debt do you incur by using it   Is there a simpler way to get the job done

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I don t know about best book  but the purists might say Design Patterns  Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software  As far as my personal favorite  I like Head First Design Patterns published by O Reilly  It s written in a conversational voice that appeals to me  When I read it  I reviewed my source code at the same time to see if it applied to what I was reading  If it did  I refactored  This is how I learned Chain of Responsibility    Practice - Practice - Practice

User · Answer

I have found that it is a bit hard to comprehend or understand the benefits of some  patterns until one understands the problems they solve and the other  worse  ways the problems have been implemented     Other than the GOF and POSA books I have not really read any so I can t give you other recommendations   Really you just have to have an understanding of the problems domains and I think that many less experienced developers may not be able to appreciate the benefits of patterns   This is no slight against them   It is a lot easier to embrace  understand and appreciate good solutions when one has to struggle with poor alternatives first     Good luck

User · Answer

Practice practice practice  I think 4 to 5 books is even an excessive reading exercise without some good amount of practising  Best way to do this  I believe  is to start refactoring your current projects using the patterns  Or if you don t have any projects you re actively working on then just do it your own way and then try refactoring to patterns    You cannot appreciate them fully if you haven t suffered through the problems they solve  And please keep in mind that they are not silver bullets - you don t need to memorize them and push it hard to apply on the fly  My two cents

User · Answer

I have found that it is a bit hard to comprehend or understand the benefits of some  patterns until one understands the problems they solve and the other  worse  ways the problems have been implemented     Other than the GOF and POSA books I have not really read any so I can t give you other recommendations   Really you just have to have an understanding of the problems domains and I think that many less experienced developers may not be able to appreciate the benefits of patterns   This is no slight against them   It is a lot easier to embrace  understand and appreciate good solutions when one has to struggle with poor alternatives first     Good luck

User · Answer

Practice  practice  practice   You can read about playing the cello for years  and still not be able to put a bow to instrument and make anything that sounds like music   Design patterns are best recognized as a high-level issue  one that is only relevant if you have the experience necessary to recognize them as useful   It s good that you recognize that they re useful  but unless you ve seen situations where they would apply  or have applied  it s almost impossible to understand their true value   Where they become useful is when you recognize design patterns in others  code  or recognize a problem in the design phase that fits well with a pattern  and then examine the formal pattern  and examine the problem  and determine what the delta is between them  and what that says about both the pattern and the problem   It s really the same as coding  K amp R may be the  bible  for C  but reading it cover-to-cover several times just doesn t give one practical experience  there s no replacement for experience

User · Answer

I ve lead a few design patterns discussion groups  our site  and have read 5 or 6 patterns books  I recommend starting with the Head First Design Patterns book and attending or starting a discussion group  The Head First book might look a little Hasboro at first  but most people like it after reading a chapter or two    Use the outstanding resource - Joshua Kereivisky s A Learning Guide to Design Patterns for the pattern ordering and to help your discussion group  Out of experience the one change I suggest to the ordering is to put Strategy first  Most of today s developers have experienced some good or bad incarnation of a Factory  so starting with Factory can lead to a lot of conversation and confusion about the pattern This tends to take focus off how to study and learn patterns which is pretty essential at that first meeting

User · Answer

Practice practice practice  I think 4 to 5 books is even an excessive reading exercise without some good amount of practising  Best way to do this  I believe  is to start refactoring your current projects using the patterns  Or if you don t have any projects you re actively working on then just do it your own way and then try refactoring to patterns    You cannot appreciate them fully if you haven t suffered through the problems they solve  And please keep in mind that they are not silver bullets - you don t need to memorize them and push it hard to apply on the fly  My two cents

User · Answer

The way I learned design patterns is by writing lots of really terrible software   When I was about 12  I have no idea what was good or bad   I just wrote piles of spaghetti code   Over the next 10 years or so  I learned from my mistakes   I discovered what worked and what didn t   I independently invented most of the common design patterns  so when I first heard what design patterns were  I was very excited to learn about them  then very disappointed that it was just a collection of names for things that I already knew intuitively    that joke about teaching yourself C   in 10 years isn t actually a joke   Moral of the story  write lots of code   As others have said  practice  practice  practice   I think until you understand why your current design is bad and go looking for a better way  you won t have a good idea of where to apply various design patterns   Design pattern books should be providing you a refined solution and a common terminology to discuss it with other developers  not a paste-in solution to a problem you don t understand

User · Answer

Practice  practice  practice   You can read about playing the cello for years  and still not be able to put a bow to instrument and make anything that sounds like music   Design patterns are best recognized as a high-level issue  one that is only relevant if you have the experience necessary to recognize them as useful   It s good that you recognize that they re useful  but unless you ve seen situations where they would apply  or have applied  it s almost impossible to understand their true value   Where they become useful is when you recognize design patterns in others  code  or recognize a problem in the design phase that fits well with a pattern  and then examine the formal pattern  and examine the problem  and determine what the delta is between them  and what that says about both the pattern and the problem   It s really the same as coding  K amp R may be the  bible  for C  but reading it cover-to-cover several times just doesn t give one practical experience  there s no replacement for experience

User · Answer

Have you tried the Gang of Four book   Design Patterns  Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software

User · Answer

I ve lead a few design patterns discussion groups  our site  and have read 5 or 6 patterns books  I recommend starting with the Head First Design Patterns book and attending or starting a discussion group  The Head First book might look a little Hasboro at first  but most people like it after reading a chapter or two    Use the outstanding resource - Joshua Kereivisky s A Learning Guide to Design Patterns for the pattern ordering and to help your discussion group  Out of experience the one change I suggest to the ordering is to put Strategy first  Most of today s developers have experienced some good or bad incarnation of a Factory  so starting with Factory can lead to a lot of conversation and confusion about the pattern This tends to take focus off how to study and learn patterns which is pretty essential at that first meeting

User · Answer

Lot of good examples have been given  I d like to add one   Misapply them  You don t need to do that intentionally  it will happen when you try to apply them in your initial Design-Pattern-fit  During that time every single problem that you ll see will seem to fit exactly one design pattern  Often the problems all seem to fit the same design pattern for some reason  Singelton is a primary candidate for that    And you ll apply the pattern and it will be good  And some months later you will need to change something in the code and see that using that particular pattern wasn t that smart  because you coded yourself into a corner and you need to refactor again   Granted  that s not really a do-that-and-you ll-learn-it-in-21-days answer  but in my experience it s the most likely to give you a good insight into the matter

User · Answer

My two cents for such and old question  Some people already mentioned  practice and refactoring  I believe the right order to learn about patterns is this    Learn Test Driven Development  TDD  Learn refactoring Learn patterns   Most people ignore 1  many believe they can do 2  and almost everybody goes straight for 3   For me the key to improve my software skills was learning TDD  It might be a long time of painful and slow coding  but writing your tests first certainly makes you think a lot about your code  If a class needs too much boilerplate or breaks easily you start noticing bad smells quite fast  The main benefit of TDD is that you lose your fear of refactoring your code and force you to write classes that are highly independent and cohesive  Without a good set of tests  it is just too painful to touch something that is not broken  With safety net you will really adventure into drastic changes to your code  That is the moment when you can really start learning from practice   Now comes the point where you must read books about patterns  and to my opinion  it is a complete waste of time trying too hard  I only understood patterns really well after noticing I did something similar  or I could apply that to existing code  Without the safety tests  or habits of refactoring  I would have waited until a new project  The problem of using patterns in a fresh project is that you do not see how they impact or change a working code  I only understood a software pattern once I refactored my code into one of them  never when I introduced one fresh in my code

User · Answer

I think you need to examine some of the issues you have encountered as a developer where you pulled your hair out after you had to revise your code for the 10th time because of a yet another design change   You probably have a list of projects where you felt that there was a lot of rework and pain   From that list you can derive the scenarios that the Design Patterns intend to solve   Has there been a time where you needed to perform the same series of actions on different sets of data   Will you need to be able to future capability to an application but want to avoid reworking all your logic for existing classes   Start with those scenarios and return to the catalog of patterns and their respective problems they are supposed to solve   You are likely to see some matches between the GoF and your library of projects

User · Answer

For books  I would recommend Design Patterns Explained  and Head First Design patterns   To really learn these patterns  you should look at your existing code   Look for what patterns you are already using   Look at code smells and what patterns might solve them

User · Answer

For a beginner  Head First Design patterns would do  once we are familiar with all the patterns  then try to visualise the real time objects into those patterns   Book will help you understand the basic concepts  unless until you have implemented in the real world you CANT Be a MASTER of the DESIGN PATTERNS

User · Answer

My two cents for such and old question  Some people already mentioned  practice and refactoring  I believe the right order to learn about patterns is this    Learn Test Driven Development  TDD  Learn refactoring Learn patterns   Most people ignore 1  many believe they can do 2  and almost everybody goes straight for 3   For me the key to improve my software skills was learning TDD  It might be a long time of painful and slow coding  but writing your tests first certainly makes you think a lot about your code  If a class needs too much boilerplate or breaks easily you start noticing bad smells quite fast  The main benefit of TDD is that you lose your fear of refactoring your code and force you to write classes that are highly independent and cohesive  Without a good set of tests  it is just too painful to touch something that is not broken  With safety net you will really adventure into drastic changes to your code  That is the moment when you can really start learning from practice   Now comes the point where you must read books about patterns  and to my opinion  it is a complete waste of time trying too hard  I only understood patterns really well after noticing I did something similar  or I could apply that to existing code  Without the safety tests  or habits of refactoring  I would have waited until a new project  The problem of using patterns in a fresh project is that you do not see how they impact or change a working code  I only understood a software pattern once I refactored my code into one of them  never when I introduced one fresh in my code

User · Answer

Design patterns are just tools--kind of like library functions   If you know that they are there and their approximate function  you can go dig them out of a book when needed   There is nothing magic about design patterns  and any good programmer figured 90  of them out for themselves before any books came out   For the most part I consider the books to be most useful at simply defining names for the various patterns so we can discuss them more easily

User · Answer

I think you need to examine some of the issues you have encountered as a developer where you pulled your hair out after you had to revise your code for the 10th time because of a yet another design change   You probably have a list of projects where you felt that there was a lot of rework and pain   From that list you can derive the scenarios that the Design Patterns intend to solve   Has there been a time where you needed to perform the same series of actions on different sets of data   Will you need to be able to future capability to an application but want to avoid reworking all your logic for existing classes   Start with those scenarios and return to the catalog of patterns and their respective problems they are supposed to solve   You are likely to see some matches between the GoF and your library of projects

User · Answer

Derek Banas made youtube tutorials for desing patterns that I like a lot   http   www youtube com playlist list PLF206E906175C7E07  They can be a little short in time  but his timing and presentation makes them very enjoyful to learn

User · Answer

I have found that it is a bit hard to comprehend or understand the benefits of some  patterns until one understands the problems they solve and the other  worse  ways the problems have been implemented     Other than the GOF and POSA books I have not really read any so I can t give you other recommendations   Really you just have to have an understanding of the problems domains and I think that many less experienced developers may not be able to appreciate the benefits of patterns   This is no slight against them   It is a lot easier to embrace  understand and appreciate good solutions when one has to struggle with poor alternatives first     Good luck

User · Answer

My suggestion would be a combination of implement a few of them and analyze some implementations of them   For example  within  Net  there are uses of adapter patterns if you look at Data Adapters  as well as a few others if one does a little digging into the framework

User · Answer

For books  I would recommend Design Patterns Explained  and Head First Design patterns   To really learn these patterns  you should look at your existing code   Look for what patterns you are already using   Look at code smells and what patterns might solve them

User · Answer

The best way is to begin coding with them   Design patterns are a great concept that are hard to apply from just reading about them   Take some sample implementations that you find online and build up around them   A great resource is the Data  amp  Object Factory page   They go over the patterns  and give you both conceptual and real world examples   Their reference material is great  too

User · Answer

The notion that read design patterns  practice coding them is not really going to help IMO  When you read these books 1  Look for the basic problem that a particular design pattern solves starting with Creational Patterns is your best bet  2  I am sure you have written code in past  analyze if you faced the same problems that design patterns aim at providing a solution  3  Try to redesign re factor code or perhaps start off fresh   About resources you can check these   www dofactory com Design Patterns  Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software  Addison-Wesley Professional Computing Series  by Erich Gamma  Richard Helm  Ralph Johnson  and John M  Vlissides Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture by Martin Fowler   1 is quick start  2 will be in depth study  3 will explain or should make you think what you learnt in 2 fits in enterprise software   My 2 cents

User · Answer

For books  I would recommend Design Patterns Explained  and Head First Design patterns   To really learn these patterns  you should look at your existing code   Look for what patterns you are already using   Look at code smells and what patterns might solve them

User · Answer

Have you read  Design Patterns Explained   by Allan Shalloway   This book is very different from other design pattern books because it is not so much a catalog of patterns  but primarily presents a way of decomposing a problem space that maps easily to patterns   Problems can be decomposed into two parts  things that are common and things that vary  Once this is done  we map the common things to an interface  and the things that vary to an implementation  In essence  many patterns fall into this  pattern    For example in the Strategy pattern  the common things are expressed as the strategy s context  and the variable parts are expressed as the concrete strategies   I found this book highly thought provoking in contrast with other pattern books which  for me  have the same degree of excitement as reading a phone book

User · Answer

My suggestion would be a combination of implement a few of them and analyze some implementations of them   For example  within  Net  there are uses of adapter patterns if you look at Data Adapters  as well as a few others if one does a little digging into the framework

User · Answer

I read three books and still did not understand patterns very well until I read Head First Design Patterns by OReilly  This book opened my eyes and really explained well

User · Answer

My suggestion would be a combination of implement a few of them and analyze some implementations of them   For example  within  Net  there are uses of adapter patterns if you look at Data Adapters  as well as a few others if one does a little digging into the framework

User · Answer

I recommend HeadFirst DesignPattern  Reading the book is not enough  after assimilating the concepts you need to findout the answers for lot of questions arise in your mind and try to findout the real life applications where in these patterns can be used  I am doing the same and started asking questions even those questions look silly

User · Answer

I don t know about best book  but the purists might say Design Patterns  Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software  As far as my personal favorite  I like Head First Design Patterns published by O Reilly  It s written in a conversational voice that appeals to me  When I read it  I reviewed my source code at the same time to see if it applied to what I was reading  If it did  I refactored  This is how I learned Chain of Responsibility    Practice - Practice - Practice

User · Answer

I read three books and still did not understand patterns very well until I read Head First Design Patterns by OReilly  This book opened my eyes and really explained well

User · Answer

Lot of good examples have been given  I d like to add one   Misapply them  You don t need to do that intentionally  it will happen when you try to apply them in your initial Design-Pattern-fit  During that time every single problem that you ll see will seem to fit exactly one design pattern  Often the problems all seem to fit the same design pattern for some reason  Singelton is a primary candidate for that    And you ll apply the pattern and it will be good  And some months later you will need to change something in the code and see that using that particular pattern wasn t that smart  because you coded yourself into a corner and you need to refactor again   Granted  that s not really a do-that-and-you ll-learn-it-in-21-days answer  but in my experience it s the most likely to give you a good insight into the matter

User · Answer

I ve lead a few design patterns discussion groups  our site  and have read 5 or 6 patterns books  I recommend starting with the Head First Design Patterns book and attending or starting a discussion group  The Head First book might look a little Hasboro at first  but most people like it after reading a chapter or two    Use the outstanding resource - Joshua Kereivisky s A Learning Guide to Design Patterns for the pattern ordering and to help your discussion group  Out of experience the one change I suggest to the ordering is to put Strategy first  Most of today s developers have experienced some good or bad incarnation of a Factory  so starting with Factory can lead to a lot of conversation and confusion about the pattern This tends to take focus off how to study and learn patterns which is pretty essential at that first meeting

User · Answer

The way I learned design patterns is by writing lots of really terrible software   When I was about 12  I have no idea what was good or bad   I just wrote piles of spaghetti code   Over the next 10 years or so  I learned from my mistakes   I discovered what worked and what didn t   I independently invented most of the common design patterns  so when I first heard what design patterns were  I was very excited to learn about them  then very disappointed that it was just a collection of names for things that I already knew intuitively    that joke about teaching yourself C   in 10 years isn t actually a joke   Moral of the story  write lots of code   As others have said  practice  practice  practice   I think until you understand why your current design is bad and go looking for a better way  you won t have a good idea of where to apply various design patterns   Design pattern books should be providing you a refined solution and a common terminology to discuss it with other developers  not a paste-in solution to a problem you don t understand

User · Answer

I have found that it is a bit hard to comprehend or understand the benefits of some  patterns until one understands the problems they solve and the other  worse  ways the problems have been implemented     Other than the GOF and POSA books I have not really read any so I can t give you other recommendations   Really you just have to have an understanding of the problems domains and I think that many less experienced developers may not be able to appreciate the benefits of patterns   This is no slight against them   It is a lot easier to embrace  understand and appreciate good solutions when one has to struggle with poor alternatives first     Good luck

User · Answer

My suggestion would be a combination of implement a few of them and analyze some implementations of them   For example  within  Net  there are uses of adapter patterns if you look at Data Adapters  as well as a few others if one does a little digging into the framework

User · Answer

I ve lead a few design patterns discussion groups  our site  and have read 5 or 6 patterns books  I recommend starting with the Head First Design Patterns book and attending or starting a discussion group  The Head First book might look a little Hasboro at first  but most people like it after reading a chapter or two    Use the outstanding resource - Joshua Kereivisky s A Learning Guide to Design Patterns for the pattern ordering and to help your discussion group  Out of experience the one change I suggest to the ordering is to put Strategy first  Most of today s developers have experienced some good or bad incarnation of a Factory  so starting with Factory can lead to a lot of conversation and confusion about the pattern This tends to take focus off how to study and learn patterns which is pretty essential at that first meeting

User · Answer

The best way is to begin coding with them   Design patterns are a great concept that are hard to apply from just reading about them   Take some sample implementations that you find online and build up around them   A great resource is the Data  amp  Object Factory page   They go over the patterns  and give you both conceptual and real world examples   Their reference material is great  too

User · Answer

The best way is to begin coding with them   Design patterns are a great concept that are hard to apply from just reading about them   Take some sample implementations that you find online and build up around them   A great resource is the Data  amp  Object Factory page   They go over the patterns  and give you both conceptual and real world examples   Their reference material is great  too

User · Answer

Have you read  Design Patterns Explained   by Allan Shalloway   This book is very different from other design pattern books because it is not so much a catalog of patterns  but primarily presents a way of decomposing a problem space that maps easily to patterns   Problems can be decomposed into two parts  things that are common and things that vary  Once this is done  we map the common things to an interface  and the things that vary to an implementation  In essence  many patterns fall into this  pattern    For example in the Strategy pattern  the common things are expressed as the strategy s context  and the variable parts are expressed as the concrete strategies   I found this book highly thought provoking in contrast with other pattern books which  for me  have the same degree of excitement as reading a phone book

User · Answer

Have you tried the Gang of Four book   Design Patterns  Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software

User · Answer

I think you need to examine some of the issues you have encountered as a developer where you pulled your hair out after you had to revise your code for the 10th time because of a yet another design change   You probably have a list of projects where you felt that there was a lot of rework and pain   From that list you can derive the scenarios that the Design Patterns intend to solve   Has there been a time where you needed to perform the same series of actions on different sets of data   Will you need to be able to future capability to an application but want to avoid reworking all your logic for existing classes   Start with those scenarios and return to the catalog of patterns and their respective problems they are supposed to solve   You are likely to see some matches between the GoF and your library of projects

User · Answer

I would think it is also difficult to study design patterns  You have to know more about OOP and some experiences with medium to big application development  For me  I study as a group of developers to make discussion  We follow A Learning Guide To Design Patterns that they have completed the patterns study  There are C  and JavaScript developers join together  It is fancy thing for me is the C  developer write codes in JavaScript and the JavaScript developer do the same thing for C  codes  After I leave a meeting I also research and read a few books at home to review  The better way to understand more and remember in my mind is to do blogging with examples in both C  and JavaScript in here http   tech wowkhmer com category Design-Patterns aspx   I would suggest first before going to each design patterns please understand the name of patterns  In addition if someone know the concept please just explain and give one example not only just programming but in the read world   for example    Factory Method   Read world  I just give money  5   10 or  20 and it will produce pizza back without knowing anything about how it produce  I just get a small  medium or big pizza depend on money input so that I can eat or do whatever    Programming  The client just pass parameter value  5   10 or  20 to the factory method and it will return Pizza object back  So the client can use that object without knowing how it process   I m not sure this can help you  It depends on knowledge level of people join in the meeting

User · Answer

Practice practice practice  I think 4 to 5 books is even an excessive reading exercise without some good amount of practising  Best way to do this  I believe  is to start refactoring your current projects using the patterns  Or if you don t have any projects you re actively working on then just do it your own way and then try refactoring to patterns    You cannot appreciate them fully if you haven t suffered through the problems they solve  And please keep in mind that they are not silver bullets - you don t need to memorize them and push it hard to apply on the fly  My two cents

User · Answer

For a beginner  Head First Design patterns would do  once we are familiar with all the patterns  then try to visualise the real time objects into those patterns   Book will help you understand the basic concepts  unless until you have implemented in the real world you CANT Be a MASTER of the DESIGN PATTERNS

User · Answer

The way I learned design patterns is by writing lots of really terrible software   When I was about 12  I have no idea what was good or bad   I just wrote piles of spaghetti code   Over the next 10 years or so  I learned from my mistakes   I discovered what worked and what didn t   I independently invented most of the common design patterns  so when I first heard what design patterns were  I was very excited to learn about them  then very disappointed that it was just a collection of names for things that I already knew intuitively    that joke about teaching yourself C   in 10 years isn t actually a joke   Moral of the story  write lots of code   As others have said  practice  practice  practice   I think until you understand why your current design is bad and go looking for a better way  you won t have a good idea of where to apply various design patterns   Design pattern books should be providing you a refined solution and a common terminology to discuss it with other developers  not a paste-in solution to a problem you don t understand

User · Answer

Design patterns are just tools--kind of like library functions   If you know that they are there and their approximate function  you can go dig them out of a book when needed   There is nothing magic about design patterns  and any good programmer figured 90  of them out for themselves before any books came out   For the most part I consider the books to be most useful at simply defining names for the various patterns so we can discuss them more easily

User · Answer

I would think it is also difficult to study design patterns  You have to know more about OOP and some experiences with medium to big application development  For me  I study as a group of developers to make discussion  We follow A Learning Guide To Design Patterns that they have completed the patterns study  There are C  and JavaScript developers join together  It is fancy thing for me is the C  developer write codes in JavaScript and the JavaScript developer do the same thing for C  codes  After I leave a meeting I also research and read a few books at home to review  The better way to understand more and remember in my mind is to do blogging with examples in both C  and JavaScript in here http   tech wowkhmer com category Design-Patterns aspx   I would suggest first before going to each design patterns please understand the name of patterns  In addition if someone know the concept please just explain and give one example not only just programming but in the read world   for example    Factory Method   Read world  I just give money  5   10 or  20 and it will produce pizza back without knowing anything about how it produce  I just get a small  medium or big pizza depend on money input so that I can eat or do whatever    Programming  The client just pass parameter value  5   10 or  20 to the factory method and it will return Pizza object back  So the client can use that object without knowing how it process   I m not sure this can help you  It depends on knowledge level of people join in the meeting

User · Answer

The notion that read design patterns  practice coding them is not really going to help IMO  When you read these books 1  Look for the basic problem that a particular design pattern solves starting with Creational Patterns is your best bet  2  I am sure you have written code in past  analyze if you faced the same problems that design patterns aim at providing a solution  3  Try to redesign re factor code or perhaps start off fresh   About resources you can check these   www dofactory com Design Patterns  Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software  Addison-Wesley Professional Computing Series  by Erich Gamma  Richard Helm  Ralph Johnson  and John M  Vlissides Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture by Martin Fowler   1 is quick start  2 will be in depth study  3 will explain or should make you think what you learnt in 2 fits in enterprise software   My 2 cents

User · Answer

Practice  practice  practice   You can read about playing the cello for years  and still not be able to put a bow to instrument and make anything that sounds like music   Design patterns are best recognized as a high-level issue  one that is only relevant if you have the experience necessary to recognize them as useful   It s good that you recognize that they re useful  but unless you ve seen situations where they would apply  or have applied  it s almost impossible to understand their true value   Where they become useful is when you recognize design patterns in others  code  or recognize a problem in the design phase that fits well with a pattern  and then examine the formal pattern  and examine the problem  and determine what the delta is between them  and what that says about both the pattern and the problem   It s really the same as coding  K amp R may be the  bible  for C  but reading it cover-to-cover several times just doesn t give one practical experience  there s no replacement for experience

User · Answer

I don t know about best book  but the purists might say Design Patterns  Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software  As far as my personal favorite  I like Head First Design Patterns published by O Reilly  It s written in a conversational voice that appeals to me  When I read it  I reviewed my source code at the same time to see if it applied to what I was reading  If it did  I refactored  This is how I learned Chain of Responsibility    Practice - Practice - Practice

User · Answer

I read three books and still did not understand patterns very well until I read Head First Design Patterns by OReilly  This book opened my eyes and really explained well

User · Answer

The best way is to begin coding with them   Design patterns are a great concept that are hard to apply from just reading about them   Take some sample implementations that you find online and build up around them   A great resource is the Data  amp  Object Factory page   They go over the patterns  and give you both conceptual and real world examples   Their reference material is great  too

User · Answer

The way I learned design patterns is by writing lots of really terrible software   When I was about 12  I have no idea what was good or bad   I just wrote piles of spaghetti code   Over the next 10 years or so  I learned from my mistakes   I discovered what worked and what didn t   I independently invented most of the common design patterns  so when I first heard what design patterns were  I was very excited to learn about them  then very disappointed that it was just a collection of names for things that I already knew intuitively    that joke about teaching yourself C   in 10 years isn t actually a joke   Moral of the story  write lots of code   As others have said  practice  practice  practice   I think until you understand why your current design is bad and go looking for a better way  you won t have a good idea of where to apply various design patterns   Design pattern books should be providing you a refined solution and a common terminology to discuss it with other developers  not a paste-in solution to a problem you don t understand

User · Answer

Have you tried the Gang of Four book   Design Patterns  Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software

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The notion that read design patterns  practice coding them is not really going to help IMO  When you read these books 1  Look for the basic problem that a particular design pattern solves starting with Creational Patterns is your best bet  2  I am sure you have written code in past  analyze if you faced the same problems that design patterns aim at providing a solution  3  Try to redesign re factor code or perhaps start off fresh   About resources you can check these   www dofactory com Design Patterns  Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software  Addison-Wesley Professional Computing Series  by Erich Gamma  Richard Helm  Ralph Johnson  and John M  Vlissides Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture by Martin Fowler   1 is quick start  2 will be in depth study  3 will explain or should make you think what you learnt in 2 fits in enterprise software   My 2 cents

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I don t know about best book  but the purists might say Design Patterns  Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software  As far as my personal favorite  I like Head First Design Patterns published by O Reilly  It s written in a conversational voice that appeals to me  When I read it  I reviewed my source code at the same time to see if it applied to what I was reading  If it did  I refactored  This is how I learned Chain of Responsibility    Practice - Practice - Practice

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I read three books and still did not understand patterns very well until I read Head First Design Patterns by OReilly  This book opened my eyes and really explained well

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Lot of good examples have been given  I d like to add one   Misapply them  You don t need to do that intentionally  it will happen when you try to apply them in your initial Design-Pattern-fit  During that time every single problem that you ll see will seem to fit exactly one design pattern  Often the problems all seem to fit the same design pattern for some reason  Singelton is a primary candidate for that    And you ll apply the pattern and it will be good  And some months later you will need to change something in the code and see that using that particular pattern wasn t that smart  because you coded yourself into a corner and you need to refactor again   Granted  that s not really a do-that-and-you ll-learn-it-in-21-days answer  but in my experience it s the most likely to give you a good insight into the matter

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Lot of good examples have been given  I d like to add one   Misapply them  You don t need to do that intentionally  it will happen when you try to apply them in your initial Design-Pattern-fit  During that time every single problem that you ll see will seem to fit exactly one design pattern  Often the problems all seem to fit the same design pattern for some reason  Singelton is a primary candidate for that    And you ll apply the pattern and it will be good  And some months later you will need to change something in the code and see that using that particular pattern wasn t that smart  because you coded yourself into a corner and you need to refactor again   Granted  that s not really a do-that-and-you ll-learn-it-in-21-days answer  but in my experience it s the most likely to give you a good insight into the matter

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I would think it is also difficult to study design patterns  You have to know more about OOP and some experiences with medium to big application development  For me  I study as a group of developers to make discussion  We follow A Learning Guide To Design Patterns that they have completed the patterns study  There are C  and JavaScript developers join together  It is fancy thing for me is the C  developer write codes in JavaScript and the JavaScript developer do the same thing for C  codes  After I leave a meeting I also research and read a few books at home to review  The better way to understand more and remember in my mind is to do blogging with examples in both C  and JavaScript in here http   tech wowkhmer com category Design-Patterns aspx   I would suggest first before going to each design patterns please understand the name of patterns  In addition if someone know the concept please just explain and give one example not only just programming but in the read world   for example    Factory Method   Read world  I just give money  5   10 or  20 and it will produce pizza back without knowing anything about how it produce  I just get a small  medium or big pizza depend on money input so that I can eat or do whatever    Programming  The client just pass parameter value  5   10 or  20 to the factory method and it will return Pizza object back  So the client can use that object without knowing how it process   I m not sure this can help you  It depends on knowledge level of people join in the meeting

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Practice  practice  practice   You can read about playing the cello for years  and still not be able to put a bow to instrument and make anything that sounds like music   Design patterns are best recognized as a high-level issue  one that is only relevant if you have the experience necessary to recognize them as useful   It s good that you recognize that they re useful  but unless you ve seen situations where they would apply  or have applied  it s almost impossible to understand their true value   Where they become useful is when you recognize design patterns in others  code  or recognize a problem in the design phase that fits well with a pattern  and then examine the formal pattern  and examine the problem  and determine what the delta is between them  and what that says about both the pattern and the problem   It s really the same as coding  K amp R may be the  bible  for C  but reading it cover-to-cover several times just doesn t give one practical experience  there s no replacement for experience

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Design patterns are just tools--kind of like library functions   If you know that they are there and their approximate function  you can go dig them out of a book when needed   There is nothing magic about design patterns  and any good programmer figured 90  of them out for themselves before any books came out   For the most part I consider the books to be most useful at simply defining names for the various patterns so we can discuss them more easily

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Design patterns are just tools--kind of like library functions   If you know that they are there and their approximate function  you can go dig them out of a book when needed   There is nothing magic about design patterns  and any good programmer figured 90  of them out for themselves before any books came out   For the most part I consider the books to be most useful at simply defining names for the various patterns so we can discuss them more easily

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Have you tried the Gang of Four book   Design Patterns  Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software

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Have you read  Design Patterns Explained   by Allan Shalloway   This book is very different from other design pattern books because it is not so much a catalog of patterns  but primarily presents a way of decomposing a problem space that maps easily to patterns   Problems can be decomposed into two parts  things that are common and things that vary  Once this is done  we map the common things to an interface  and the things that vary to an implementation  In essence  many patterns fall into this  pattern    For example in the Strategy pattern  the common things are expressed as the strategy s context  and the variable parts are expressed as the concrete strategies   I found this book highly thought provoking in contrast with other pattern books which  for me  have the same degree of excitement as reading a phone book

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Practice practice practice  I think 4 to 5 books is even an excessive reading exercise without some good amount of practising  Best way to do this  I believe  is to start refactoring your current projects using the patterns  Or if you don t have any projects you re actively working on then just do it your own way and then try refactoring to patterns    You cannot appreciate them fully if you haven t suffered through the problems they solve  And please keep in mind that they are not silver bullets - you don t need to memorize them and push it hard to apply on the fly  My two cents

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Ask yourself these questions   What do they do   What do they decouple couple   When should you use them   When should you not use them   What missing language feature would make them go away   What technical debt do you incur by using it   Is there a simpler way to get the job done

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I recommend HeadFirst DesignPattern  Reading the book is not enough  after assimilating the concepts you need to findout the answers for lot of questions arise in your mind and try to findout the real life applications where in these patterns can be used  I am doing the same and started asking questions even those questions look silly

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For books  I would recommend Design Patterns Explained  and Head First Design patterns   To really learn these patterns  you should look at your existing code   Look for what patterns you are already using   Look at code smells and what patterns might solve them

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Derek Banas made youtube tutorials for desing patterns that I like a lot   http   www youtube com playlist list PLF206E906175C7E07  They can be a little short in time  but his timing and presentation makes them very enjoyful to learn

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Have you read  Design Patterns Explained   by Allan Shalloway   This book is very different from other design pattern books because it is not so much a catalog of patterns  but primarily presents a way of decomposing a problem space that maps easily to patterns   Problems can be decomposed into two parts  things that are common and things that vary  Once this is done  we map the common things to an interface  and the things that vary to an implementation  In essence  many patterns fall into this  pattern    For example in the Strategy pattern  the common things are expressed as the strategy s context  and the variable parts are expressed as the concrete strategies   I found this book highly thought provoking in contrast with other pattern books which  for me  have the same degree of excitement as reading a phone book

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I think you need to examine some of the issues you have encountered as a developer where you pulled your hair out after you had to revise your code for the 10th time because of a yet another design change   You probably have a list of projects where you felt that there was a lot of rework and pain   From that list you can derive the scenarios that the Design Patterns intend to solve   Has there been a time where you needed to perform the same series of actions on different sets of data   Will you need to be able to future capability to an application but want to avoid reworking all your logic for existing classes   Start with those scenarios and return to the catalog of patterns and their respective problems they are supposed to solve   You are likely to see some matches between the GoF and your library of projects

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The notion that read design patterns  practice coding them is not really going to help IMO  When you read these books 1  Look for the basic problem that a particular design pattern solves starting with Creational Patterns is your best bet  2  I am sure you have written code in past  analyze if you faced the same problems that design patterns aim at providing a solution  3  Try to redesign re factor code or perhaps start off fresh   About resources you can check these   www dofactory com Design Patterns  Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software  Addison-Wesley Professional Computing Series  by Erich Gamma  Richard Helm  Ralph Johnson  and John M  Vlissides Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture by Martin Fowler   1 is quick start  2 will be in depth study  3 will explain or should make you think what you learnt in 2 fits in enterprise software   My 2 cents

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I would think it is also difficult to study design patterns  You have to know more about OOP and some experiences with medium to big application development  For me  I study as a group of developers to make discussion  We follow A Learning Guide To Design Patterns that they have completed the patterns study  There are C  and JavaScript developers join together  It is fancy thing for me is the C  developer write codes in JavaScript and the JavaScript developer do the same thing for C  codes  After I leave a meeting I also research and read a few books at home to review  The better way to understand more and remember in my mind is to do blogging with examples in both C  and JavaScript in here http   tech wowkhmer com category Design-Patterns aspx   I would suggest first before going to each design patterns please understand the name of patterns  In addition if someone know the concept please just explain and give one example not only just programming but in the read world   for example    Factory Method   Read world  I just give money  5   10 or  20 and it will produce pizza back without knowing anything about how it produce  I just get a small  medium or big pizza depend on money input so that I can eat or do whatever    Programming  The client just pass parameter value  5   10 or  20 to the factory method and it will return Pizza object back  So the client can use that object without knowing how it process   I m not sure this can help you  It depends on knowledge level of people join in the meeting

[design-patterns] How to study design patterns?

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