Step Away from the IDE! Designing with Patterns Before You Code

The main focus of this book is to learn the most popular and widely used Gang of Four (GoF) patterns. The secondary focus of this book is to consider using those patterns with real-world applications, with realistic and changing business requirements. Too many books on complicated topics such as patterns are full of abstract, contrived, or trivial examples. You have learned some popular patterns, but they do not benefit from your coding if you can’t apply them. Over the years, I’ve developed a process that works for me, and I hope it works for you too. My process eases you into patterns one step at a time as you consider a new design.

This might be a disturbing revelation, but this chapter will not present any code samples. We’ll be following the practice of diagramming our code before we start writing it.

We’ll cover the following topics in this chapter:

• We’ll watch...