Joy of Patterns: Using Patterns for Enterprise Development, The

Building from Scratch

One of the places where patterns are most often applied is in developing a new system. In designing a system architecture from the ground up, I take the following approach:

• Understand your requirements

  Know what you don't know

  Know what's likely to change

• Create hinge points for the unknowns and entities that we suspect are likely to change

• Utilize supporting patterns to ensure no loose ends

• Make a sanity check

• Implement a little

• Restart the whole process at a lower level, as necessary

Now, let's create a fairly simple project to illustrate this approach:

Understanding Your Requirements

I know the following is obvious, but I am going to restate it here because it is so easily overlooked: Before you design a system or write any ...