Crafting Code with Patterns

24 Apr 2025

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Imagine you are building a house…

Now you wouldn’t start buidling without a blueprint or at least a solid plan, otherwise the process of building your house may fall into complete chaos. In software development, design patterns act as these blueprints to guide developers to solve common or repeated problems efficiently. Patterns help ensure that software is organized, buildable, and easy to maintain.

What are Design Patterns?

Design patterns are reusable, proven solutions to common problems in software design. They’re like formulas that help developers avoid doing repetitive tasks. By using design patterns, developers can create software that is easy to understand, modify, and extend. Just as architects follow blueprints to build a safe, functional house, developers use design patterns to build well-structured software.

How I’ve Used Design Patterns

In our group project to construct a website for “Da Grindz,” a nutrition-focused web application for the students and staff of UH Mānoa, I utilized several design patterns to ensure the code was clean, maintainable, and scalable. For example, I used a container pattern. This pattern helped me organize different sections of the landing page and keep track of style additions. Another example was my utilizaiton of React Bootstrap components like Container, Row, and Col to break the page into smaller, reusable sections. This made it easier to manage things like the “Welcome” section, “Key Features,” and “User Guide,” and helped us keep everything neat.

Another design pattern I used was modularization. This means I made smaller parts of the website that could be used again in different places. For example, the buttons and images were made into individual pieces of code, so I didn’t have to rewrite the same code over and over. This made the website easier to update and maintain.