I’ve always found Derek Banas’ channel really useful. In late middle school, I started watching his tutorials for how to code. So it’s really interesting to go back and watch his videos, to say the least.
I feel like the adapter design pattern is something that shouldn’t really need to be used. Don’t get me wrong, it’s very useful. Like real adapters, however, the problem itself shouldn’t really exist. That’s especially true with code; it seems as though adapters become required when interfaces aren’t abstracted well enough. In his video, for example, he has an EnemyAttacker interface that represents some kind of enemy. However, the methods are very specific and presume certain characteristics about the attacker. We then need to use an adapter to get around that specificity. It seems to me that writing the interface more generally to begin with would be more ideal. But given that it’s a bad idea to modify old working code, an adapter is a great solution.
In principle, an adapter does exactly what you expect it to: it adapts code. It takes one “interface” and connects it to another “interface”. That’s the colloquial interface as opposed to a coding specific interface. We use adapters every day. The best example is a phone charger. It converts (or adapts) 120V AC power to a low DC voltage. It also adapts the physical plug into USB type-c. All of the functionality is hidden inside of the charger and from the perspective of a user, it’s literally plug and play.
An adapter in code acts the same. I honestly like the example he gave so if you want to see an example of actual code, check out his video. Conceptually, one description of an adapter is the following: We have two interfaces A and B that have many differences, but are conceptually similar. We can create an adapter so we can use any A as a B, or vice versa. It’s okay because of their similarity (or perhaps they need not even be similar!). Really, it’s an incredibly basic pattern so the specifics aren’t that important.
Fundamentally, an adapter is just code that allows other code to operate together. Again, I think the best way to conceptualize it is through the imagery of any real life adapters. However, it should ideally not be necessary in scenarios such as the one from the video. Abstraction, within reason of course, should be prioritized ahead of time.
From the blog CS@Worcester – The Introspective Thinker by David MacDonald and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.