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Discussion on: Design Patterns: use or not to use

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Matthew Cory • Edited

I was programming for a few years - self taught mostly - before I learned that design patterns were even a thing. When I found out about them, by and large they fell into two categories. First was "oh wow new shiny!" - things I thought were cool and could see uses for. The other category was "wow I've already been using this, what's special about it?"

Personally I tend to overuse ideas - the hammer analogy someone else here commented about - and I did that quite a bit with patterns when I first learned them. I think that's okay as long as you have the awareness after the fact (or better yet, during!) to realize "hey, you know, I really didn't need to go all out and make a full-on adapter for this when I could've just done blargh."

Eventually you'll get to a point where it's a natural choice based on the code base and the needs of your project. But you'll have to spend a good chunk of time over using and under using them to get there.