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POWill Design Patterns solve object communication?
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copied!<p>I have been researching and looking for answers here to a problem that I suspect might be solved by a better understanding of design patterns. I think the problem is that I am a self-taught coder and people seem to tend to assume familiarity with a lot of esoteric terminology; I have ended up in Wikipedia spirals trying to determine what some phrases mean. That said - on to the coding/structural problem.</p> <p>Actually, just before I start, I should point out that I may well be making unknown presumptions in the way the code is structured in my question. If this is the case, could folks suggest alternatives to what I'm suggesting? I'd really appreciate learning how to better code as opposed to simply being told I'm doing it wrong. OK...</p> <p>Let's say we have a Room class, which has 4 Walls, a Ceiling and a Floor. These are instantiated 'inside' the Room. The Room also has a Table which has 4 TableLegs, again instantiated inside the Table, inside the Room. (This, I believe, is Composition, but please correct me if I've got that wrong!).</p> <p>Finally, the problem: If someone, somehow, pushes the Table, the TableLeg(s) will need to check the type of Floor they're standing on to trigger the appropriate sound. This, currently would be my solution:</p> <p>The Table dispatches an event. The Room listens for that 'table pushed' event, quizes the Floor to determine its type, then passes that type to a method on Table, which in turn passes it to the TableLegs. This, to me, seems fairly inelegant; hence my suspicion that knowledge of design patterns might be useful. Is there something fundamentally wrong about the structure I've described that I'm not appreciating? If so, what is the alternative?</p> <p>Finally, I have heard of the Gang of Four book. If that's my first port of call, is it written in an accessible style or will I have to have studied computer science to grasp it? Sorry for the long, design-pattern-beginner's question.</p>

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