(jeffa) Re: Are design patterns worth it?

[jeffa]

I studied C++ and the GoF book long before i embarked upon the Perl path. At some point during my journey down the Perl path, i thought it would be really neat if someone (me) wrote Perl versions of each of the GoF Patterns. Well, someone already did (partially) - http://www.patternsinperl.com. But, there is a funny thing about Perl - read Dominus's "Design Patterns" Aren't for more.

I personally think that Design Patterns are worthy of studying, they can really help you design better. There are real world examples of Design Patterns implemented in Perl, such as what Matts discusses at his paper on Proxy Objects. There are plenty of other examples here at this site, such as a Factory Pattern that i demonstrated a while back (be sure and read Kanji's and merlyn's comments from the root thread as well if you do follow that link). Just try the new and improved Super Search (tye++ once again).

Now, are Design Patterns going to reverse the Big Ball of Mud for you. No, only you, your co-workers, a lot of planning, and time can do that, but that doesn't mean that you shouldn't learn how a few patterns work. You never know when they might be useful. I wish you the best of luck, i myself have been handed a medium sized ball of mud (written in ASP and VBA for Access, no less) that someone else wrote. Right now, the most critical piece to shaping this lump into a more manageable product is to clean up the database schema - to bad the GoF didn't invent a Preventative LART Pattern*. I can't complain though, it is nice to be employed again. :)

jeffa

* prevents non-coders from thinking they can