software design patterns - beginner or hobbyist

I'm new to this forum, but I couldn't help but jump into this discussion because it brings back memories of when I started coding as a hobbyist. Back in the day, I had just one programming course and was eager to dive into software design patterns. To be honest, it was a bit overwhelming at first, but with some patience and practice, I managed to grasp the concept of a few patterns.

cafejose, state the thing you actually want to write some software to do. Talking about a specific example is much easier than trying to consider more abstract ideas about patterns.

I had become curious most generally.  I have no current program-writing plans.  I DID have some a few years ago, and I wrote a few programs to my more specific goals at that time.  

I tried to give one idea in my first post on topic; being a menu-based program, using text information presented to a user.  But I was not asking about any specific program.  I ask for identifying design patterns.  

Simple example could be,  linear interpolation.  But I already wrote one or two of them which worked very well; two of two-dimensional data pair, and user wants to know the part of another data pair; but once the program is made,  .... I wonder, Do programmers think according to any set of formal Design Patterns?  

Observe that I asked about this in July 2022, so that was a long while ago and I have done no program-making since before that time.  (Almost none; I can't remember too well...)

Hi there. I was wondering why you stopped programming.

Hi there. I was wondering why you stopped programming.

To be very brief (?), Introductory Programming back some decades ago was very very difficult for me.  I tried as much as possible to stay away from any further computer science/ computer programming.  Several years afterward,  I began trying and relearning through review of a couple of old textbooks, some internet community help, and improved greatly, but still never really became highly skilled.  I created or designed a few programs or applications according to my own interests.  Since then I relearned my programming skills at various times, occasionally creating some other / another program of a current interest.  FORMALLY,  I never studied beyond an introductory level.  INFORMALLY,  I learned a few things from the introductory level which I could not learn well when I was a formal student.  I today am basically stuck in a BASIC programming language.  Since school, I have only made programs in BASIC as a hobbyist.  I never wrote programs as a professional  (except for one , about ~23 years ago, and I wrote it in a form of BASIC).

I see. By the way, I also programmed in BASIC at school. And we started with Turbo Pascal. I will never forget that blue screen. I used to dream of becoming a programmer and even bought courses to learn. But I got bored with it quickly. Or maybe I just couldn't sit at the computer for long.

 

Is a beginning programmer or someone who had no more than one programming course, from a few decades ago, 

equipped to understand the meaning of Software Design Patterns, and also able to recognize or understand a 

couple of them?  

 

 

Not really. Understanding Design Patterns requires more experience in coding.

The best way to learn is to practice with smaller and simpler problems at first and get used to hunting the bugs that will invariably arise. A fundamental design pattern is the idea of reusability, where the programmer uses a number of more narrowly focused routines to solve a more complex problem. This is much like how more complex math is built upon the foundation of more basic concepts. Once you get a little experience constructing simpler functions, you will begin to see how to go about organizing your code to make it easier to perform more complicated tasks. Examples are your friend. Now ChatGPT is very useful to sketch out algorithms and often illustrates techniques you didn't know ou were looking for. Practice and experiment with examples to more fully understand what the code does and with time you'll get ideas about more extensive experiments and a more innate ability to break down problems in a way that solutions can be realized.