Analysis
Compare patterns
Evaluate design patterns side by side across intent, tradeoffs, languages, and integration fit.
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Analysis
Pattern comparison
Reviewing 3 patterns.
| Criteria | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Basics | |||
| Category | structural | behavioral | behavioral |
| Summary | Convert the interface of a class or module into another interface clients expect. | Encapsulate a request as an object so it can be invoked, queued, logged, or undone independently of the receiver that performs the work. | — |
| Intent | Allow incompatible interfaces to work together without changing the consuming code. | Encapsulate a request as an object so it can be invoked, queued, logged, or undone independently of the receiver that performs the work. | Separate an algorithm from the object structure it operates on by moving behavior into visitor objects. |
| Decision factors | |||
| Problem | A client needs to talk to a legacy class or external service whose interface does not match the rest of the codebase. | A system needs to trigger actions without tightly coupling the code that requests an operation to the code that performs it, and it may also need queuing, history, or undo support. | You need to perform operations across a set of different object types without stuffing all the logic into the objects themselves. |
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| Integration notes | Adapters are useful when exposing a stable boundary over a legacy API, vendor SDK, or payload format mismatch. | Commands work well for UI actions, background jobs, workflow steps, and undoable operations because invokers can trigger commands without depending on receiver details. | Visitor is useful for AST processing, reporting, cart calculations, and exporting object structures to alternate formats. |