The Difficulties of Using Design Patterns among Novices: An Exploratory Study

Elements of design patterns have been incorporated in computer science syllabus. Most of these efforts have been motivated by the benefits offered by patterns as well as positive feedback from the industry and software community. Despite various techniques and approaches suggested by researchers and educators to ensure effective learning of patterns, there is no formal reports on the actual difficulties encountered by these novices when applying patterns. Thus, we have conducted an exploratory study to identify the difficulties they have in using patterns.