FlashApe

If there’s one subject in flash programming that’s been beaten to death over the last couple of years, it’s the MVC, Model-View-Controller, design pattern. With good reason, no doubt…it’s very effective, and also a little difficult to pick up for people just getting used to programming with patterns.

I was having a conversation with someone today who was saying that he just wasn’t getting it. I then started explaining to him that MVC is really what they call a ‘compound patttern’…a pattern made up of subpatterns. I asked if he was familiar with Observer, he was, he got that part. Then I asked if he was familiar with the State pattern, to which he responded that no, he hadn’t gotten to that yet. I pointed out that the ‘controller’ in MVC is really just an implementation of the Strategy pattern. Then he stated something which occured to me as true, that I hadn’t realized before, which is that none of the other Flash books that talk about MVC really mention that.

So, like I always do when talking aboutdesign patterns, I recommended the book Head First Design Patterns, which does a great job of explaining the design patterns separately first, then a great job again how they work together to form the MVC pattern.