The Cookbooks of Coding
05 Dec 2024
By Developers, For Developers
A design pattern is sort of like recipes for coding. Much like having a cookbook in your arsenal, it provides you with already known techniques found and made by cooks like developers in this case. These patterns have been proven over time to be reliable and effective to use in the process of software development. They promote code that is maintainable and easy to understand which allows developers to freely use its applications. Design patterns contribute to a lot of topics such as user interfaces, databases, testing, software processes, and many more. For example, a very useful design pattern would be the prototype pattern. It saves time and resources by using an existing object and modifying it to your needs, much like a prototype. When creating video games, the basic models for characters, weapon designs, and map layouts are all often made using this technique. This is very useful when creating complex objects and using that created object, tweaking it to its needs, and introducing it as another. It is much like using a template so that instead of having to create an object every time, duplication of an already existing object can be used to avoid the hassle and save time.
In the context of creating a website for club browsing, a page shows basic information like the club’s name, a short description, and when they meet. A special page can be made for admins, where they can do extra things like add, delete, or edit clubs. Instead of creating the admin page from scratch, the same page a normal user sees can be reused but changed to make the appropriate changes and permissions for an admin. This means taking the existing user page as a starting point, or a template, and making a copy of it. Then add the admin features, like buttons for managing clubs onto that copy. This saves time and effort because most of the page’s layout and design are already done—just add the extra stuff admins need.
Design patterns can and do go beyond this. Overtime, through countless trials and errors, these patterns have been refined to address existing and future challenges in software development. They are toolkits for developers made by developers.