One of the most important aspects of writing maintainable code is being able to notice the recurring
themes in that code and optimize them. This is an area where knowledge of design paerns can prove
invaluable.
In the first part of this book, we will explore the history and importance of design paerns which can
really be applied to any programming language. If you're already sold on or are familiar with this
history, feel free to skip to the chapter "What is a Paern?" to continue reading.
Design paerns can be traced back to the early work of an architect named Christopher Alexander. He
would often write publications about his experience in solving design issues and how they related to
buildings and towns. One day, it occurred to Alexander that when used time and time again, certain
design constructs lead to a desired optimal effect.
In collaboration with Sara Ishikawa and Murray Silverstein, Alexander produced a paern language that
would help empower anyone wishing to design and build at any scale. This was published back in 1977
in a paper titled "A Paern Language", which was later released as a complete hardcover book.
Some 30 years ago, software engineers began to incorporate the principles Alexander had wrien about
into the first documentation about design paerns, which was to be a guide for novice developers
looking to improve their coding skills. It's important to note that the concepts behind design paerns
have actually been around in the programming industry since its inception, albeit in a less formalized
form.
One of the first and arguably most iconic formal works published on design paerns in software
engineering was a book in 1995 called Design Paerns: Elements Of Reusable Object-Oriented Software. This
was wrien by Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson and John Vlissides - a group that became
known as the Gang of Four (or GoF for short).
The GoF's publication is considered quite instrumental to pushing the concept of design paerns further
in our field as it describes a number of development techniques and pitfalls as well as providing twenty-
three core Object-Oriented design paerns frequently used around the world today. We will be covering
these paerns in more detail in the section "Categories of Design Paerns".
In this book, we will take a look at a number of popular JavaScript design paerns and explore why
certain paerns may be more suitable for your projects than others. Remember that paerns can be
applied not just to vanilla JavaScript (i.e standard JavaScript code), but also to abstracted libraries such as
jQuery or dojo as well. Before we begin, let’s look at the exact definition of a "paern" in software design.
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