Even in the bog-standard sort of software I write, I rarely find that choosing and applying a pattern is "mechanical". Even if you tell yourself "oh, I'll use

Even in the bog-standard sort of software I write, I rarely find that choosing and applying a pattern is "mechanical". Even if you tell yourself "oh, I'll use Observer", there are still so many details that can make your solution be boring and alright, or actually clean and magical. Foresight into how your structure will evolve, making things easier to test and read, separating the _right_ concerns. I have copied stuff from Stack Overflow but always for solutions to a couple lines of code. I don't know what Stack Overflow answer I can copy for the general structure of my code...