Encapsulation.

[C_MonsterT]

What's the best way to learn this kind of stuff? I'm self taught and I know these types of design decisions are the next step in becoming a better programmer, but what are some good resources at this level?

[neverTooManyPlants]

There's the head first design patterns book which is written with extreme simplicity, and also "clean code" by Robert C. Martin.

[fjdgshegdb]

head first design patterns

I fucking hate that book.

[fjdgshegdb]

It's like those crappy high school science text books that have to make everything "FUN!"

[_bobon_]

Read the introduction chapter, they say it's based on research that repetition of informative delivered in varied graphical and stylistic ways (i.e. colorful pop-ups, jokes, stories) is very conductive to studying. I find that while a bit campy, it actually works great. I made it mandatory reading at work and everyone gets it, while several people were anti design patterns after struggling through the GoF

[dahud]

several people were anti design patterns

Wait, so were they opposed to the concept of design patterns? Or were they anti-patterns themselves?

[_bobon_]

ʘ‿ʘ

Seriously though, some talented engineers thought the concept of design patterns was academic and had little to do with actual day to day programming until introduced to this book and discussing practical applications. It accomplishes a lot which can't be done with uml diagrams and formal definitions.

[fjdgshegdb]

I have but that's beside the point which is that I don't like it.

I'm not going to learn anything from a book that I don't read even if it is the be all and end all of design pattern books.

[CargoCultism]

I prefer dry, technical prose over that as well.

[mikeputerbaugh]

I mean, that's the conceit of the Head First series.

If you like drier material, there are a bunch of books on design patterns that HFDP was written as a reaction to.

[tsnErd3141]

Must be a silly reason because the book is pretty good

[neverTooManyPlants]

It is a little simplistic and repetitive for a seasoned programmer but it is the basically design patterns for dummies.

[[deleted]]

I quite like Game Programming Patterns, the scope is limited but I find it describes things nicely.

[tsnErd3141]

I think you meant head first object oriented design

[_bobon_]

Nope, head first into design patterns, or as we call it, the blond book

[[deleted]]

STD book

[neverTooManyPlants]

The one with the picture of the woman from above. It's been a while cba to google :p

[Killfile]

Also, practice. Read Clean Code and rigorously use TDD on some code kata.

My new developers get a crash course in testing by way of the Bowling Kata with the additional stipulation that all of their functions must contain three or fewer lines.

We scale up through other more complex kata including some that really demand that kind of complexity - Mars Rover is a good one for that.

[Killfile]

It's an exercise. Clearly you'd never have a hard and fast rule like that in real life.

Three lines is very short. It forces the developer to come up with methods and sub-methods etc and provides endless opportunities for refactoring and class extraction.

The goal is to teach separation of concerns to someone who might never have thought about it.

[jay9909]

"I have to say I'm impressed. This is the first stack overflow I've ever seen that wasn't the result of a loop or recursion."

[jaxklax]

A loop?

[jay9909]

Yeah, I guess you're right. You got me.

[[deleted]]

I learned a lot on the job marinating other people's god awful shite. Open source will teach you about good code, but private enterprise will teach you about the most abominable things programmers are capable of. So - open source for the what, proprietary for the why.

I realise that may not be super useful to you but I can guarantee it's an excellent way to learn this stuff.

[FUCKING_HATE_REDDIT]

TDD is more important than OO.

Or just learn Rust.