Learning Appreciation for Design Patterns by Doing it the Hard Way First

Abstract

People who have to live without something often have a greater appreciation for what that thing can do for them than those who have never experienced life without it. In particular, a software designer can have a greater appreciation for what design patterns can contribute to software development if he or she has first had some experience developing software without the use of such patterns. An object-oriented design course is discussed in which students were given a sequence of projects in which they needed to design and implement their solutions before the appropriate patterns were introduced. Then after the patterns were discussed, the students were told to refactor their code using these patterns. The positive and negative aspects of this approach to teaching design patterns are discussed.