Simple factory

A simple factory is generally not viewed as a formal design pattern, but you will find it quite useful in your day-to-day programming. The understanding we gain at the end of this section will be helpful in the discussion on a more formal pattern called abstract factory design pattern. Let's start with the definition of a simple factory.

A factory encapsulates the instance creation piece. The client code doesn't need to know the logic of instance creation. It just knows that whenever it needs an object of a specific type, the factory is the go-to place. Any class, or function, or class method that is used to construct such objects is often referred to as a factory. A simple factory is something you will use quite often. It is typically considered a better object-oriented technique than a formal design pattern.

Simple factory scenario – The recruit feature

Recall that we had fast-forwarded the game to an imaginary future version called Attack of the Orcs v6.0.0. This version...