Grasping the concept of design patterns in software development was a little tricky for me at first. But once it clicked, it revealed to me how much more efficient the process of creating programs or software can be. From my understanding, design patterns in software development are methods that programmers follow to make already existing problems easier to solve. A good saying that helped engrain this concept into my head was the phrase, “We’re not trying to reinvent the wheel here, the problem has already been solved.” Since the start of the spring semester, there have been many occasions where I have been using design patterns, but I just didn’t recognize that I was.
Knowing certain design patterns is a very valuable skill to have as a software engineer because it can save a lot of time. Being efficient as a software engineer is a very valuable trait to have. Design patterns use lots of different solutions to very common problems that don’t need to be solved from scratch again, therefore making software development a lot faster. Design patterns could also help within development teams and improve team communication, especially if everyone working within that team all know that certain design pattern, making it easier to understand the structure and purpose of the code. Not only does design patterns make programming more efficient, it can also reduce the chances of creating bugs, since those solutions have already been proven to work. In the long run, having the skill of knowing design patterns makes programming easier to work within groups, and overall makes everything a lot more efficient.
Without realizing it, for the past couple of months I’ve been using design patterns. I was not aware that they were design patterns, as I thought of them as methods or code made by other programmers. During my time in my software engineering class, I worked with the same Next.js template given to us by the professor which could be worked with using the component based structure of React. By breaking down the UI into smaller, reusable components, I was unknowingly using certain design patterns. At the time, I was just following the structure that was given to me while trying to make my code more organized. After going through the understanding of what design patterns are, I now see that this method of coding is a great way to keep code modular, flexible, and very easy to maintain.
After understanding what design patterns are, it really helped me put a name to the techniques I’ve been using, and it’s shown me more ways coding can be made efficient. While I continue to grow as a developer, I aim to use design patterns to help create more clean and efficient code. Understanding these patterns not only gives me more tools to solve programming challenges, but it also helps me align with good practices and help communicate more effectively with other developers on team projects.