Who needs the Fab 4 when you can have the Gang of 4?!

Erich Gamma. Richard Helm. Ralph Johnson. John Vlissides.

These names may not conjure up the immediate recognition like John, Paul, Ringo, and George, but they are rock stars in the Object Oriented Programming community.

Seen here rocking some peak 1990s tech fashion, the “Group of 4” (aka Gang of 4) literally wrote the book on Design Patterns. They did not invent these design patterns themselves; rather, they described and categorized patterns they had observed in a way that was concrete, concise, and applicable across the subject of Object Oriented Programming(OOP). Their insights helped advance and explicitly define core concepts of OOP in a way that allowed programming to be classified as a specific engineering discipline for the first time. Though not often taught today (the book’s Smalltalk examples are too dated), Design Patterns was the seminal treatise on the subject, and it remains an important and influential book. A more modern and accessible take on the subject, our bootcamp reference book Head First Design Patterns will be a useful tool as we enter the software development field.

What is a design pattern?

A design pattern provides reusable solutions for developing software. To quote Tim, design patterns are “a way for programmers to convey a known structure of objects by having one word for it”. I’m looking forward to leaning more about the topic. In the meantime, I found a short bird’s eye view summary of what Design Structures are here.

Design Pattern Definitions - Part 1

Here are the design patterns covered in today’s lecture. I’ll update the spreadsheet to reflect tomorrow’s talk.

posted by Rachel Sullivan