Design Patterns

Design patterns are "general reusable solutions to a commonly occurring problem within a given context in software design". Design patterns are a great way to describe some of the culture and 'tribal knowledge' of programming in a language. Design patterns are very language-specific - what is a pattern in one language may be unnecessary in another due to a language feature, or impossible to express due to a missing feature.

If overused, design patterns can add unnecessary complexity to programs. However, they are a great way to share intermediate and advanced level knowledge about a programming language.

Design patterns in Rust

Rust has many very unique features. These features give us great benefit by removing whole classes of problems. Some of them are also patterns that are unique to Rust.

YAGNI

If you're not familiar with it, YAGNI is an acronym that stands for You Aren't Going to Need It. It's an important software design principle to apply as you write code.

The best code I ever wrote was code I never wrote.

If we apply YAGNI to design patterns, we see that the features of Rust allow us to throw out many patterns. For instance, there is no need for the strategy pattern in Rust because we can just use traits.

TODO: Maybe include some code to illustrate the traits.