| I don’t think I agree, but ultimately only feel comfortable speaking for myself. I’m fairly new to programming so would be interested in hearing if someone else does this too... On a walk this afternoon (for some reason), I realized I had a visual shape in my head for most design patterns. Some of them look a lot like a knot-tying diagram, for example. I’m not sure I had realized that before. I also realized the shape representations are about as close to implementation as I would prefer to store design patterns in my mind. Beyond that, they might be limiting or, at worst, strenuous to use as guidelines. They’re surely more useful (to me) than UML or even code. But the best part is I can tell they’ve been there all along. I wasn’t trying to make them up. I was just mapping out a project while on a walk. I was pretty relaxed at the time and maybe that’s why this came up. For what they are, I was a little disappointed how long it took to parse the Elements of Reuseable OO Software book when I was just learning to code. And then when I had used the patterns and knew them, I found it a bit sad they were communicated through such rigid forms. Art actually contends with the same sort of conceptual divisions. There’s the medium which is rigid and cumbersome, the form which is more pure, critical in the abstract but medium-agnostic, and the application, being the interface or the thing out in the world. So I do agree the ability to transpose these concepts between form and implementation is what matters, but it’s the back and forth that matters, not where one begins. |