How do you keep up with VB and Design Patterns

[Liquid Metal]

Besides reading books, what are some other best ways to stay tip top on technology, especially Design Patterns and Architecting?

I try often to look at the Microsoft site but that thing is like a zoo. Join newsgroup?

[techgnome]

News groups, user groups, magazines, forums, MSDN, conferences, books, webcasts, websites....

Usual places.

-tg

[Hack]

Moved

[Liquid Metal]

News groups, user groups, magazines, forums, MSDN, conferences, books, webcasts, websites....

What is the difference between News Groups and User Groups? Also, do you have any tips on using each of these effectively?

Thank You

[techgnome]

News groups are just that.... USer Groups are usualy local people getting together.

Using News Groups effectively is hard.... you just have to dive in and learn how to separate the good postings from the junk.

Best way to use a User Group effectively is to attend a meeting or two.
-tg

[Al42]

Using News Groups effectively is hard.... you just have to dive in and learn how to separate the good postings from the junk.

First try a few news readers - settle on the most comfortable one.

Find relevant newsgroups.

Read for at least a week, longer on groups that aren't that active (some active groups can have a couple of thousand posts a day). Get a feel for both how the particular group works (what's allowed, what's not) and who are the posters, who are the spammers.

Jump in.

[Liquid Metal]

Design Patterns does not really have a definition. What are some of you design patterns that you can give me as an example?

Thank You

[Shaggy Hiker]

Design Patterns is a buzz word that became hot a few years ago. It's yet another "great new thing to make our lives easier and make programs more reliable", and like every other "Great New Thing", it has a few people who swear by it, a few people who swear at it, a few people who make some quick cash writing books about it, and a large number of people who don't really think it is that big a deal.

The concept is that there are proven "patterns" to solve certain common types of problems, and if you use them, you will code better. Bah!! Humbug! There is NO shortcut, and just following some pattern is not going to really make any difference.

[penagate]

I think design patterns were invented to give computer science students a new topic to study.

Does anyone really think to themselves "Ah, I'll use <insert pattern name here> today"? I know I don't.

[Shaggy Hiker]

I think you would only do that if you really had no interest or capability in programming.

[Liquid Metal]

Thanks guys but can you guys give me a simple example of such use of design pattern?

[RhinoBull]

I don't think there is any. There is no template either (even though many would say there is - but for me it's just a pure speculation) unless you're designing another callendar - but even so there are thousands of different ways...

[RobDog888]

Just design a program and its logic flow. Then after you are done you will have a pattern of your design.

[Liquid Metal]

But what about the Singleton Design Pattern?
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms954629.aspx

What about this one?
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms972319.aspx

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/in...5032546AA7z65Y
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/practices/default.aspx

What do you think? Thanks

[Shaggy Hiker]

What about them? I have used the Singleton pattern in a couple of places. I even made some thread about that one a couple years ago when I didn't know what it was, at which point several people said "Duh, that's a Singleton!" And well they should.

This highlights the problem with patterns. Sure, you might use a similar, or even identical, construct in many different projects, that stunning realizations makes not a whit of difference to anything. Just because you can put a name on a piece of your design doesn't do you any good at all, because you still have to write it. Perhaps you might be able to go back to existing code, and re-use some, but you could do that no matter what you called the thing.

How can you benefit from knowing the name for the pattern? Perhaps you could ask somebody about the pattern, but by then, you pretty much know the design, so you will be asking about a design you already have. I knew how to write a Singleton before I knew that it had a name.

Of course, if you studied a whole bunch of patterns, then you could sound all erudite by saying "aha, we should use the binary least squares regression pattern here", but then somebody would grab you by the suspenders and snap you into next week. What would anybody do with that? Force their design to fit a pattern?

No, the fact that certain designs seem to appear over and over again in programming does lend them to being named, but it provides no other tangible benefit.

[Liquid Metal]

Thanks for taking the time to your reply.

I am the same way too. Sometime, I design certain thing but I don't even realize it has a name behind it.

[Shaggy Hiker]

And that's all that matters. Frankly, I think the whole concept of Design Patters came from marketing, or some other non-programmer group.