Occasional Thoughts

Ever heard of Design Patterns? If you are a software developer and are serious about your job, you most probably did already. Design patterns are one of the most useful and powerful tool a software developer may use. By using design patterns, you are accessing the wisdom of the whole experienced developer community through using proven, reusable best-practices and solutions.
To gain a first knowledge on how helpful design patterns are I recommend the following blog articles. These articles are about a mad scientist, who tries to conquer the world with the help of design patterns. Very helpful and funny:

• The Prototype Pattern
• The Extension Objects Pattern
• The Command Pattern
• The Observer Pattern
• The Memento Pattern

And if this convinced you that it's time to learn more about design patterns I can recommend the book Head First: Design Patterns. This book is written in a way, which makes fun reading it. Although studying design patterns is rather boring, this book manages to be more amusing than a novel, while hammering the patterns right into your head. And what I liked best: It does not just show you design patterns, it already teaches you the design practices behind patterns. This really helps you write better code in general, although you are not using a design pattern. And last but not least, you may want to read the bible of design patterns: Design Patterns CD: Elements of Re-usable Object-Oriented Software by the Gang of Four: Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson and John Vlissides. Those are the people that spread the design pattern virus.