Design Patterns in Software Development: My Journey from Chaos to Structure
Designing software is the most important aspect of software development and I didn't know it when I started coding. I was trying patterns and find out how it works with what and got exhausted so much.
Since I always liked directly implementing the actual software instead of learning and planning first, the outcome turned out to be always unsatisfying. In today's write I will tell about how I first met with software design :).
Here we go;
My first real wake-up call about design came when we had to refactor a service that started as a simple API but grew into a tangled mess. We'd added feature after feature without planning, and suddenly we were spending more time fixing bugs than building new features.
I started my coding journey in a startup and as you may guess there were a lot of different kinds of work to do. For example, one day you would be looking for Kubernetes related issues, one day researching for the new AI related topic.
No blaming, it was highly teaching environment with a lot of pros and cons. Always liked working with enthusiastic people who weren't there to be there but try to get something out of the experience. This made the environment a little fast paced and made the learning possible for a layz person like me :).
The time I spend in this place taught me a lot in terms of learning fast. Made me quick thinker and action taker instead of sitting and planning for hours.
Today, I realize that this is not sustainable for an engineer. Therefore, I started spending more time on designing before implementing. Not only the business models but how is the production environment going to be like, how is secret management will be handled and more.
In design phase, I always ask questions and try to answer them if cannot I would directly get into research phase which is learning and planning at the same time.
MVC
Model-View-Controller design pattern can be the most preferred design pattern on earth. Simple, straight to the point and effective. Design your business logic in models, control the business in the controllers and show your business to the world with the view with a view engine.
When I learned this software design pattern, my coding days were relieved and knew what to expect from the software because there were boundaries and the requirements were so clear than before.
You expected to create a website for a person. It's going to serve only 100 people/month and not really that fancy things expected. You are expected to create just a blog site. This wouldn't be big of a deal to start and design in the go (not recommended).
On the other hand, let's say you are given a project that comes from a cloud provider which will have 100s of requirements to keep up with. What happens when you just start and not design anything? Let me predict, after an hour life is good birds are singing, after a day something is wrong but you don't have any idea and after a week you are helpless sitting in front of red (errors) screen. This comes from the experience, :) don't take it personal.
Real Story:
I was expected to build an application in the producer-consumer related context. At first I thought I could do this in just a week. It took... took... ... ... took months that I can't even remember :). What I did wrong was all about making the business logic complex and I was right to do that because it was my first experience.
If I had to do it today, I would:
Start with basic producer-consumer flow
Build the simplest working models
Add complexity only when needed
Keep controllers focused on routing logic
Separate view concerns completely
Instead, I had:
Huge controllers doing everything
Business logic scattered everywhere
Views that knew too much about the system
After learning designing matters my days were fun than ever. I knew what to expect from the application and the boundaries are very clear. Also, this way you can predict the due date better for the project
Getting Complex... (DDD)
So far, I was really crawling and not even walking yet. So, it was time to build more complex applications. As I was working on this new project called linux-diagnostic-agent, I really felt the urge to have some different design than MVC. This was the starting point where I learned Domain driven design (DDD).
Let's dive into a real example. In the linux-diagnostic-agent project, we needed to:
Collect system logs
Monitor network metrics
Maintain secure tunnels
Handle agent configuration
Each of these components had its own complex logic and requirements. Trying to fit this into MVC would have been a mess. Instead, DDD helped me organize it like this:
Each domain (logs, network, tunnel) lives in its own space with:
Clear boundaries
Independent logic
Specific requirements
The beauty of this approach? When we needed to add new features or fix bugs:
Changes in log collection didn't affect network monitoring
Network updates didn't break the tunnel
Each piece could evolve independently
This structure not only made the code cleaner but also made it easier for different team members to work on different domains without stepping on each other's toes.
DDD isn't just for huge enterprises - even in smaller projects like this, it helps manage complexity by giving each piece of logic its proper home.
I really adapted this approach in my daily life thinking because its very effective even in daily life tasks. Let each task have their seperate processor and each will resolve in an isolated environment it's just a matter of time.
Last Words
We all have different stories when starting something new. My journey from chaotic code to structured design taught me that patterns aren't just theoretical concepts - they're tools that make our daily work more enjoyable. From MVC to Domain Driven Design, the goal remains the same: building maintainable systems that let developers code with a smile rather than exhaustion.