tedd, have you looked at the book we're talking about? also, there are several other books on design patterns available, but the Heads First book is one ive heard mentioned a lot. you can check out a really sweet site online phppatterns.com; in particular follow the design link on the right hand navigation. if youve been working w/ objects for more than a few months design patterns should expose their benefit almost immediately. it boils down to a really simple premise, see, i have been writing code for o, about 3 years and getting paid for it. i studied oop a bit in college for about another 3 years and tinkered w/ them in high school for probly less than a year. well after all that i can still write some pretty weak code. yes, my code may be clean, but in the greater scheme of things how well will it scale ? does it need to be modified when a new feature should be added ? does it suffer from dependency rot ? in many cases the answer to these questions is not the preferable one. so thats where the motivation for design patterns comes from. people who have been writing oop code for the past 20-30 years or so decided to start sharing their experiences with one another. after a while they got a big collection of dos and donts together and put together common optimal solutions to common problems. one of the hardest parts about using design patterns in reality is you have to be able to recognize a certain problem and then you can begin to understand how to apply a particular pattern or set of patterns to your solution. also it is not merely about rigidly following the patterns. there are also design principals, that guide us in writing code that doesnt suck. it should be mentioned the authors of said book have a masters degree and phd degree from yale in computer science; thats right, they know a thing or 2. anyway if you dont know design patterns you dont know what youre missing and you probly dont know what youre writing either :) -nathan On 7/29/07, tedd <tedd@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > At 2:00 PM -0400 7/25/07, Nathan Nobbe wrote: > >yes well at the beginning of the design patterns book they basically > explain > >the same thing. > >if you dont understand the basic oo priciples, then design patterns arent > >going to make any sense. > >these basic concepts are (not looking in the book [testing myself]..) > >encapsulation > >abstraction > >polymorphism > >inheritence > > > >ok now i will look in the book; lets see if ive learned anything; > >nice; thats what they have there; > >ya; get the basics down, but then; dont stop; learn design patterns! > > > I understand, and have used, the four mentioned above -- but have a > difficult time with design patterns. > > Sure, I get the idea that design patterns are > concepts/procedures/ideas for how to identify/classify a problem and > thereby infer a specific solution, but further than that I'm lost. > > As I see it, every problem consist of input, calculation, and > presentation. I don't see the need to classify each problem as a > specific type and then proceed accordingly. > > To me, every problem looks the same, only different. :-) > > Cheers, > > tedd > > > -- > ------- > http://sperling.com http://ancientstones.com http://earthstones.com > > -- > PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) > To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php > >
