I want to become a better developer, and so have been dedicating most of my free time outside of work to learning design patterns, and when to implement them (since I feel learning general patterns is a better starting point than learning specific libraries or tools). One issue is, that the majority of highly regarded design patterns I’m reading about tend to described in terms of their applications in software development.
I was wondering what should be considered when applying them to web development rather than software development?
For reference, these(Reference1 Reference2) is what I’ve been using as a reference when picking out what design pattern would be best applied for my current project.
1
First of all I have to say it is best practice to learn design patterns! But be sure you don’t mix up the meaning of design patterns and architectural patterns.
» Design patterns
In computer software a design pattern is a reuseable approach to solving a commonly-occurring software design problem. A design pattern is a template for solving a problem that can be used in many different situations.
Object-oriented design patterns illustrate relationships and interactions between classes or objects, without specifying the final application classes or objects that are involved.
» Why I am explaining this to you?
What I am trying to explain is that it is possible and often the case that third generation programming languages have some of them already implemented and this isn’t system or programming lanugage specific. And I am guaranteeing you that you already use some of them. The best example is the observer pattern, which you always use if use bind an event to an object or eventhandler.
» Architectural patterns
An architectural pattern is a widely recognised and reused solution to a recurring design problem in the field of software architectures. The concept of an architectural pattern has a broader scope than the concept of design pattern.
The architectural patterns address various issues in software engineering, such as computer hardware performance limitations, high availability and minimization of a business risk. Some architectural patterns have been implemented within software frameworks like ASP.NET MVC.
» Back to topic
I was wondering what should be considered when applying them to web development rather than software development?
So let wikipedia answer this question for us, referring to arechitectural patterns rather than design patterns with the example of the Model View Controller pattern:
Although originally developed for personal computing, Model View Controller has been widely adopted as an architecture for World Wide Web applications in all major programming languages. Several commercial and noncommercial application frameworks have been created that enforce the pattern. These frameworks vary in their interpretations, mainly in the way that the MVC responsibilities are divided between the client and server.
Early web MVC frameworks took a thin client approach that placed almost the entire model, view and controller logic on the server. In this approach, the client sends either hyperlink requests or form input to the controller and then receives a complete and updated web page (or other document) from the view; the model exists entirely on the server. As client technologies have matured, frameworks such as JavaScriptMVC and Backbone have been created that allow the MVC components to execute partly on the client (see also AJAX).
Because I see you are interested in good practices, take a look on architecture patterns (MVC, MVP, MVVM). The only thing you have to keep in mind here, is that you have to adapt your architecture patterns to the HTTP-mechanics.