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At what point to DP become useful?

Posted: Sun Aug 20, 2006 9:45 pm
by LiveFree
Hello All,

Well, gearing up for a fairly complex job, I was wondering... at what point do Design Patterns become almost necessary. Im talking about the Front Controller, Command, etc.

Posted: Sun Aug 20, 2006 9:52 pm
by feyd
They're never necessary. But a lot of them have been brought about because of the repeated implementation in solving a particular problem. They usually go through a lot of refactoring until they become fairly elegant solutions that are often highly modular in nature. Even if you never look at a design pattern you will likely build several during development of applications. So I say stand on the shoulders of the giants who came before you.

Off topic: when I saw DP, for some reason Dr. Pepper flashed into my head. 8O -- damn pop culture.

Posted: Sun Aug 20, 2006 10:56 pm
by RobertGonzalez
I was almost going to ask this same question today. Glad I waited. Now to the fridge for a nice cold DP.

Re: At what point to DP become useful?

Posted: Sun Aug 20, 2006 11:56 pm
by Christopher
LiveFree wrote:Well, gearing up for a fairly complex job, I was wondering... at what point do Design Patterns become almost necessary. Im talking about the Front Controller, Command, etc.
Given that patterns are Best Practices, you are probably using them currently -- whether you know it or not. So a question might be "how good is your implemetation?"

The other part about Design Patterns is that they are a common language with which to discuss programming. So if you post the quesion "I would like my Front Controller to do X" then people can get straight to heart of the question quickly. If you say "I have an index.php that kinda sorta does this and that and I want to do X" then people have to ask you question until you are talking the same language.

I am interested though, because what I think you are really talking about is using a controller architecture (not patterns per se), what are the reasons that are keeping you from moving to use a Front Controller, for example?