Understanding Design Principle vs Design Pattern in C#

Category > CSHARP || Published on : Wednesday, March 15, 2023 || Views: 208 || C# software development design principles design patterns SOLID principles Singleton pattern.


Design principles provide fundamental guidelines for designing software, while design patterns provide proven solutions to common software design problems. This article will explain the difference between design principles and design patterns and provide C# code examples to demonstrate their implementation.

Design Principle vs Design Pattern

In software development, design principles and design patterns are two important concepts that help developers create efficient, scalable, and maintainable software systems. While both are important, they serve different purposes.

Design principles are fundamental concepts that guide software design. These principles provide a set of guidelines for designing software that is easy to read, modify, and extend. Some common design principles include the SOLID principles, DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself), KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid), and YAGNI (You Ain't Gonna Need It).

For example, the SOLID principles are a set of five design principles that help developers create software that is modular, flexible, and easy to maintain. These principles include Single Responsibility Principle, Open-Closed Principle, Liskov Substitution Principle, Interface Segregation Principle, and Dependency Inversion Principle.

On the other hand, design patterns are reusable solutions to common software design problems. They are proven solutions that have been used successfully in many software projects. Design patterns help developers save time and effort by providing a set of proven solutions that can be easily adapted to specific software development projects.

For example, the Singleton pattern is a design pattern that ensures only one instance of a class is created and provides a global point of access to it. This pattern is commonly used in situations where only one instance of a class is required, such as database connections or logging.

In C#, developers can implement design principles and design patterns using code. Here's an example of implementing the Singleton pattern in C#:

public sealed class Singleton
{
    private static Singleton instance = null;
    private static readonly object padlock = new object();

    Singleton()
    {
    }

    public static Singleton Instance
    {
        get
        {
            lock (padlock)
            {
                if (instance == null)
                {
                    instance = new Singleton();
                }
                return instance;
            }
        }
    }
}

In this example, the Singleton class is implemented as a sealed class with a private constructor to prevent direct instantiation of the class. The instance of the Singleton class is created only when the Instance property is called for the first time. The lock keyword is used to ensure thread safety when accessing the Instance property.

In summary, design principles provide fundamental guidelines for designing software that is easy to read, modify, and extend. While design patterns provide proven solutions to common software design problems. Both concepts are important for creating efficient, scalable, and maintainable software systems.