4 ms·

The other thing that design patterns allow, is to learn pitfalls, applications and other attributes about them. To keep in your analogy, if you have a 3KG nail

by berkes 10mo ago

The other thing that design patterns allow, is to learn pitfalls, applications and other attributes about them. To keep in your analogy, if you have a 3KG naildriver with a 2m handle you'll quickly find out that driving nails into a drywall with that leaves you with no wall. And that it's a bad idea to use a "Naildriver" to drive these "spiralled-slothead-nails" (aka screws) into wood. But with a common language, such as design patterns, you can easily learn where they are good, what their limits are, in what cases other patterns fit better, and what pitfalls to avoid and so on. If I search the web for "why is it so hard for my naildriver to drive in spiralled-slothead-nails" I'll get zero results. But when I search for "why is it hard to hammer in a screw" I'll get good results. May sound like a silly example, but for me that sillyness illustrates how obvious designpatters should be.

palata 10mo ago
I totally agree with that! And it doesn't mean at all that everybody should learn the whole encyclopedia of tools by heart. But having it formalised somewhere is useful: as soon as someone tells me "what you're trying to do sounds like this design pattern", I can start searching and reading about it. Of course if that someone tells me "you suck, you should know that there is a design pattern for that because you should read about design patterns every night before you go to sleep", it will be different :-).
- Yokohiii 10mo ago
  I have mixed feelings about this. I think Julian Assange once said he would refer to things in discussion just as "Tomato" (or similar), in discussion to have a shortcut for something unnamed with some meaning. We do this all day in programming, we give a complex component a name and it means a lot more then just the actual word. The problem is that this specific meaning is often not universal, it's contextual. If you take a hammer, an integer and design patterns, the latter is the least universal thing. They depend on domain, context and conventions, and can change quite a lot depending on the language. Removing hammers and integers from the world would cause collapse, removing design patterns would do almost nothing. I guess the active celebration of design patterns as a catalogue of general wisdom is my primary issue here. I'd welcome any project/team/company that maintains a catalogue of their individual "patterns". But a universal source of truth has too much bible flavor to me. (Oh it also dictates OOP by default which renders it's inherent "wisdom" completely useless in many languages)
  - palata 10mo ago
    I feel like we're talking past each other. I tend to agree with you, I don't like having a "bible" and "celebration of design patterns as a catalogue of general wisdom". But formalising concepts with words makes sense. If your company maintains a catalogue of their patterns, and someone happens to know that this specific pattern is usually called a "singleton", I would find it weird to call it a tomato. Some patterns have different names in different contexts or languages, and that's fine. I don't find it weird to have a discussion around "in this language there is this pattern that they call X, does that ring a bell for you working on that other language? The idea is [...]", and maybe the answer is "yep we have it too" or "oh, we call that Y, but that's pretty similar".
    - Yokohiii 10mo ago
      Well I guess I am not clear enough. Naming stuff is a normal human habit, maybe even why we have language? So we can agree on that, it's helpful. But you say it yourself, a thing is called different in another language, so the thing is bigger then the word. But everyone can handle it better in his own head and in communication with a word for it. I guess my usual grief is that any kind of excessive celebration and ceremony comes down to some kind of brainwash. Which mostly affects newbies and cultists. The article for example isn't overtly critical on singletons, while past design pattern writings often heavily disregarded the use of it. So we don't just always reiterate the good, but also the bad.
      - palata 10mo ago
        I don't mind the celebration and ceremony as long as they don't bother me personally. I wouldn't fight against the existance of a PatternConf, I just wouldn't go :-). I've had some debates with junior devs who really wanted to enforce their newly-learned patterns, and my experience there is that passed a certain point, there is no convincing anymore: if they really insist about overengineering something with their newly-learned concept and the hierarchy doesn't allow me to prevent them from doing it, anyway they will do it. So instead of fighting I just let them, and if it turns out to be a waste of time in the end... well that's not my problem: I was not in a position to prevent it in the first place. It's not only patterns though: some juniors have a way to try to use every exciting framework or library or tool they just discovered.

by berkes 10mo ago

palata 10mo ago

I totally agree with that! And it doesn't mean at all that everybody should learn the whole encyclopedia of tools by heart. But having it formalised somewhere is useful: as soon as someone tells me "what you're trying to do sounds like this design pattern", I can start searching and reading about it. Of course if that someone tells me "you suck, you should know that there is a design pattern for that because you should read about design patterns every night before you go to sleep", it will be different :-).

Yokohiii 10mo ago
I have mixed feelings about this. I think Julian Assange once said he would refer to things in discussion just as "Tomato" (or similar), in discussion to have a shortcut for something unnamed with some meaning. We do this all day in programming, we give a complex component a name and it means a lot more then just the actual word. The problem is that this specific meaning is often not universal, it's contextual. If you take a hammer, an integer and design patterns, the latter is the least universal thing. They depend on domain, context and conventions, and can change quite a lot depending on the language. Removing hammers and integers from the world would cause collapse, removing design patterns would do almost nothing. I guess the active celebration of design patterns as a catalogue of general wisdom is my primary issue here. I'd welcome any project/team/company that maintains a catalogue of their individual "patterns". But a universal source of truth has too much bible flavor to me. (Oh it also dictates OOP by default which renders it's inherent "wisdom" completely useless in many languages)
- palata 10mo ago
  I feel like we're talking past each other. I tend to agree with you, I don't like having a "bible" and "celebration of design patterns as a catalogue of general wisdom". But formalising concepts with words makes sense. If your company maintains a catalogue of their patterns, and someone happens to know that this specific pattern is usually called a "singleton", I would find it weird to call it a tomato. Some patterns have different names in different contexts or languages, and that's fine. I don't find it weird to have a discussion around "in this language there is this pattern that they call X, does that ring a bell for you working on that other language? The idea is [...]", and maybe the answer is "yep we have it too" or "oh, we call that Y, but that's pretty similar".
  - Yokohiii 10mo ago
    Well I guess I am not clear enough. Naming stuff is a normal human habit, maybe even why we have language? So we can agree on that, it's helpful. But you say it yourself, a thing is called different in another language, so the thing is bigger then the word. But everyone can handle it better in his own head and in communication with a word for it. I guess my usual grief is that any kind of excessive celebration and ceremony comes down to some kind of brainwash. Which mostly affects newbies and cultists. The article for example isn't overtly critical on singletons, while past design pattern writings often heavily disregarded the use of it. So we don't just always reiterate the good, but also the bad.
    - palata 10mo ago
      I don't mind the celebration and ceremony as long as they don't bother me personally. I wouldn't fight against the existance of a PatternConf, I just wouldn't go :-). I've had some debates with junior devs who really wanted to enforce their newly-learned patterns, and my experience there is that passed a certain point, there is no convincing anymore: if they really insist about overengineering something with their newly-learned concept and the hierarchy doesn't allow me to prevent them from doing it, anyway they will do it. So instead of fighting I just let them, and if it turns out to be a waste of time in the end... well that's not my problem: I was not in a position to prevent it in the first place. It's not only patterns though: some juniors have a way to try to use every exciting framework or library or tool they just discovered.