Comments on: Patterns of Intellectual Bullies

By: Les

Les — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 00:44:38 +0000

> A good example is more likely to expose knowledge than seeking definitions…

You miss the point entirely. If you are unable to explain in a sensible and deliberate manner what a design pattern is and the purpose for using a design pattern then it negates what ever level of knowledge you have.

In a team environment we talk about design patterns day in and day out, and we more or less know what we are talking about when some one mentions ‘Decorator’ for example?

To me, it’s not about code implementation, as implementation is different from one context to another, from one platform to another, what it is about though is communication.

If someone lacks a complete and full understanding of design patterns then that communication breaks down.

By: php-Phreaks » Blog Archive » Why did the chicken cross the road? - Ivo Jansch

Sat, 22 Nov 2008 15:08:07 +0000

[...] Paul M Jones: “I don’t care why the chicken crossed the road, but we need to benchmark how fast the chicken crossed the road using all the major frameworks. And Chay is a bully for making it cross the road!” * * [...]

By: Ivo's Blog - jansch.nl » Blog Archive » Why did the chicken cross the road?

Sun, 09 Nov 2008 15:18:23 +0000

By: Anon

Anon — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 23:45:20 +0000

A pattern: Front Controller

Implementation: index.php routes the request and includes the necessary parts (.htaccess can help out)

Problems that it solves:

Page content

on every page, to name one. DRY.

Consequences: No infrastructure will be in place to add scripts that behave independently, unless you include the resources the same as does the front controller. Rasmus hates you.

Nobody’s hiring for PHP out here though.

By: Dave

Dave — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 06:46:33 +0000

Terry makes the point that the candidate must think through the meaning of “design pattern”, not simply pedantically rat off some quote from Fowler. Design patterns themselves are a good way for poor programmers to feel intelligent. I work with PhDs every day. We’re working on some complicated systems. Not once has anyone mentioned a design pattern. It’s beneath us to get excited about a bunch of vocabulary.

By: terry chay

terry chay — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 04:04:30 +0000

@Pádraic Brady: After the definition question, I decide to continue with

“Name a pattern?”
“Tell me how you would implement that in PHP?”
“Tell me what problem does that pattern solve?”
“Tell me what are the consequences of that pattern?”

You can see that it’d be hard to ask that battery if we haven’t even established that design patterns must have a name, must solve a problem, must be implementation independent and must have consequences. ;-)

Typically…

Name a pattern? Singleton
How do you implement it? (If their resumé says PHP 4, they can get into trouble here as you well know)
What problem does it solve? It ensures there’s only one of them. (This is not quite correct as the next question shows)
Hmm, sounds like a global variable. Tell me, when would I use a global instead of a singleton and vice versa? …

By: The Woodwork » Blog Archive » Terry the bully

The Woodwork » Blog Archive » Terry the bully — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 02:30:41 +0000

[...] Am I an intellectual bully? [...]

By: The Woodwork » Blog Archive » Defining Design Patterns

The Woodwork » Blog Archive » Defining Design Patterns — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 01:23:43 +0000

[...] friend and colleague, Paul M. Jones, calls me out as a bully. Apparently from the way interviewees complain to their headhunter about me, I [...]

By: Ilia Jerebtsov

Ilia Jerebtsov — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 00:31:46 +0000

I think the real issue here is that if you’re going to put down “design patterns” as a point in your resume, you might as well write down that you know how to make conditionals and loops in your codes. Application design patterns are just names for things you commonly do in code. They’re just as much part of the natural programming process as the “if-else” for any serious programmer.

Bringing it up in your resume just looks like a blatant attempt to use something you don’t understand to make yourself look more knowledgeable than you really are. Bursting that façade is always amusing.

By: Lars Strojny

Lars Strojny — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 23:37:44 +0000

Strange enough the applicant couldn’t answer the question straight away like “design patterns are repeatable solutions for problems in software architecture”. And we should be pretty silent when it comes to incomplete definitions. I mean nobody has found a good term for the strange thing between software architecture and raw syntax. Implementation? You kidding me.