by Andy Borsz on July 1, 2013

This month is all about design patterns as the Rocketeers read Russ Olsen's

Design Patterns in Ruby and the Gang of Four's seminal Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software. There will be design pattern posts along the way and the month will conclude with an interview with author and speaker Russ Olsen.

Design patterns are proven, reusable techniques to solve common programming challenges. By implementing a design pattern you aren't just hammering the same code out over and over again but applying a solution in a recognizable way that is familiar to other programmers. Understanding design patterns can tremendously ease programming when you recognize that the problem you face can be appropriately solved by applying a pattern.

A solid understanding of design patterns is critical if you're a professional programmer. Imagine a future programmer reviewing your code and saying "Looks like someone applied the proxy pattern poorly here without knowing it." Make sure this never happens to you! Join us this month as we explore and review this classic work and it's Ruby update.

If you're a newer Rubyist we recommend following along with Russ' Ruby take on design patterns. For advanced Rubyists, we recommend giving the original Gang of Four version a try and using the Ruby version as a companion edition.

Whichever you choose you'll be glad you did. Hope you enjoy and happy reading!