Building Resilient Software
25 Apr 2024
Have you ever built something? I am not talking about assembling a constructor, but about creating from scratch, something that is intended to be used daily. Choosing metrics, materials, and tools, and then putting it all together. Often it is a long and complicated process, and it is easy to get lost in it and get stuck. Even worse situation if you have done the project and find out that things don’t work or collapse. Terrible feelings. The same thing can happen in software development. Software is a complex system that consists of many parts, and it is easy to get lost in it. But there is a solution. The solution is called design patterns. Design patterns are a set of rules and principles that help to build a robust and reliable system. They are like a strong foundation that holds the building together. In this essay, I will talk about the design patterns book and how they can help you build a better software system.
Gang of Four
In 1994, four authors, Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson, and John Vlissides, published a book called “Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software”. This book is commonly known as the “Gang of Four” book. The authors identified 23 design patterns that can be used to solve common problems in software development. These patterns are divided into three categories: creational, structural, and behavioral patterns. Creational patterns deal with object creation mechanisms, structural patterns deal with class and object composition, and behavioral patterns deal with algorithms and object interactions.
The Gang of Four book provides a comprehensive guide on how to use these design patterns in software development. It explains the problems that each pattern solves, how to implement it, and when to use it. The book is written in a way that makes it easy for developers to understand and apply the patterns in their projects.
Benefits of Design Patterns
Using design patterns in software development has several benefits. Firstly, they provide a proven solution to common problems, which reduces the risk of errors and bugs in the system. Secondly, they make the system more flexible and scalable, as they allow for easy modification and extension of the system. Thirdly, they improve code readability and maintainability, as they provide a standardized way of solving problems.
Personal Experience
I have been using design patterns in my internship project game development. I have used the Singleton pattern to ensure that there is only one instance of the game manager class and background music class. Other examples of design patterns in games read here.
Conclusion
Design patterns are an essential for software developers. They provide a set of rules and principles that help to build robust and reliable systems. The Gang of Four book is a comprehensive guide on how to use these patterns in software development. By applying these patterns, developers can create systems that are flexible, scalable, and easy to maintain. In the world of software development, design patterns are like strong bones that hold the system together.
Written by Dmitry Gordeev. Prompt engineered with Llama2:70b LLM model