Principles of Quantitative Development

7

Computing Patterns for Trading

Design patterns in object-oriented programming (OOP) emerge from successful solutions to software architecture problems. They tend to recur in many design situations and suggest stereotyped solutions, much like the time-tested formulas that work for various genres of movies (such as family, sci-fi, slapstick etc.). Just as genres are not storylines or screenplays per se, the design patterns are neither source code nor language syntax/components. They are overarching themes of design.

Design patterns allow software architects and developers to reuse ideas that solve one problem and apply them to another problem. By promoting the reuse of ideas, patterns encourage code reuse as well. In addition, once a design pattern is chosen to address a certain problem, most of the design decisions follow naturally, ensuring completeness of the solution. Design patterns embody the expertise of master software architects in a readily applicable way and hold many advantages over starting from scratch, the least of which is time to deployment.

Big Picture 7.1: Paradigms in Computing

Paradigms in computing are not unlike the perspectives in trade processing that we talked about. Both computing paradigms and trade perspectives help the developers and users deal with the underlying concepts in an abstract and intuitive way. While the trade perspectives are not very esoteric, computing paradigms take the notion of abstraction to a whole new level. This proclivity ...