Function Meets Form: Understanding Design Patterns
05 Dec 2024
You’ve probably heard of the saying, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”, often being used to caution against tinkering with a system if it is still functioning reasonably well. This principle highlights the essence of having a design pattern, which are proven and reliable ways to accomplish something that have stood the test of time. If a business wants to set up a new website, you can almost guarantee that it will have a familiar layout consisting of a navigation menu and search bar up top, a footer with essential links on the bottom, and a main body showcasing detailed information and visuals about the business. However, design choices don’t always optimize for efficiency.
For instance, Harely-Davidson is often criticized for continuing to sell air-cooled motorcycles for a premium price tag despite the clear advantage that liquid cooling has for performance, efficiency, and longevity of the engine. Why? Because their brand’s identity revolves around the iconic design of a large, pushrod V-twin engine with cooling fins and a distinctive exhaust note. A design pattern can be tailored towards optimizing a system’s practicality and efficiency, but may also involve deliberate trade-offs for aesthetic, cultural, or other subjective reasons.
The concept of design patterns also personally applies in my own experience writing code for applications and algorithms. I have noticed that implementing certain design patterns streamlines the development process and improves the clarity of my work for other people. For example
- Writing out complex tasks in plain English or pseudocode to break them up into manageable, envisionable steps before coding.
- Creating reusable functions and object classes that can be called multiple times to avoid unnecessary redundancy.
- Partitioning the file into sections for class declarations, function definitions, and object instantiations for easier referencing.
- Following coding conventions such as indentations, camel-casing variable names, and consistent commenting for readability.
These patterns not only make my code more efficient, but they also make it easier for others (and my future self) to understand and modify. Like any other design language, coding patterns help strike a balance between individual creativity and a proven structural guideline.