Trending Software Design Patterns

Software development practices change just as quickly as the applications in which they help create. At the heart of software is the design process, determining the architecture, scalability and overall function of a solution. Here are a few software design trends that are sure to take off in 2021.

Backend-for-Frontend

One of the newest software design trends of the hybrid app era is Backend-for-Frontend. This is where a back-end service or API serves up a front-end driven set of data to optimise performance. Even with the gap between mobile and desktop devices is getting closer, screen sizes and device control issues mean that specific back end services are being created by developers to optimise performance with lightweight, paginated responses. 

Strangler Pattern

The strangler design pattern helps deal with and migrate away from legacy software systems. This is done incrementally by replacing existing functions with new smaller “micro-applications” and services in a phased approach. Once the old legacy system functionality is entirely replaced, the old legacy system is depreciated. The name “strangler pattern” was inspired from strangler fig trees.

Sidecar

The sidecar development process involves deploying a component of an application into a smaller process or container. This creates a segregated, encapsulated proxy that keeps the core functionality of the application separate.  This type of software development is ideal when handling heterogeneous microservices within one application, allowing each to incorporate different access levels and security standards.

Conclusion

Software design patterns can help developers to create robust architectures and programs with the correct level of knowledge to implement them. A practical, pragmatic approach to combining software theory and development is ideal in harnessing the power of modern software design patterns.