How to study design patterns? [closed]

Answer 1

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..

Answer 2

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.

Answer 3

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?

Answer 4

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.

Answer 5

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.

Answer 6

Have you tried the Gang of Four book?

Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software