>, if you ever find yourself thinking, "I know, I'll use a design pattern" before writing any code, you're doing it wrong.
Unless I'm misunderstanding him, I would disagree with this. When you're doing it wrong is when you use a design pattern without understanding what problem its solving, and whether you have that specific problem.
To use his tool analogy - if you're a joiner who turns up to a job thinking "we always need to use a hammer" and start randomly hitting everything, then you've gone wrong. But equally, if you're halfway through knocking a nail in with your shoe and think "Oh look, I'm using the hammer pattern now", you're doing it just as wrong.
If you're looking at two things you need to attach together and you've considered whether glue, a screw, a nail or something else is the most appropriate for this specific job, decide it's the nail and then think - "I need to use my hammer now", then you're doing it right.
I would say that using your shoe to emulate the hammer pattern is a good sign of flexibility and understanding the heart of the pattern.
The point of the hammer pattern isn't the hammer, but the movements and the forces applied. In Europe hammers are an axiomatic part of their nails already so they don't even have a name for the hammer pattern!
On the other hand, if you're with your screw and trying to spin it with the hammer because someone said use the hammer pattern...
It's a good sign of flexibility, but not a good sign of being a professional on a job.
And it's something I see depressingly often with programmers - tackling problems that there's a fairly well known existing pattern for, but not being aware of the pattern and either spending days/weeks rediscovering the pattern for themselves, or even worse inventing a new and less effective way of solving it.
Unless I'm misunderstanding him, I would disagree with this. When you're doing it wrong is when you use a design pattern without understanding what problem its solving, and whether you have that specific problem.
To use his tool analogy - if you're a joiner who turns up to a job thinking "we always need to use a hammer" and start randomly hitting everything, then you've gone wrong. But equally, if you're halfway through knocking a nail in with your shoe and think "Oh look, I'm using the hammer pattern now", you're doing it just as wrong.
If you're looking at two things you need to attach together and you've considered whether glue, a screw, a nail or something else is the most appropriate for this specific job, decide it's the nail and then think - "I need to use my hammer now", then you're doing it right.