The “breakable toys” pattern from chapter 5 is one of if not the most important pattern contained in this book in my opinion. This pattern specifically talks about the necessity of learning from failure even if your work environment does not allow you to do so. A situation like this is common within industries such as software engineering and the example the book gives of a juggler and how someone who can juggle three balls would not attempt to juggle five while actually performing which relates to software engineering as this pattern encourages you to make mistake and learn from your failures on your own time if your workplace does not allow it. “Breakable Toys” also suggests constructing a similar system to the one you may work on at work in order to be able to experiment on your own time and learn from your mistakes in an environment that directly resembles the one you are in at work. You should push yourself to find learning opportunities for yourself through the use of this pattern as if you do not have those opportunities at work then you must make your own in order to continue learning and get better at your craft. It is also stated that your “breakable toys” should be things that you find fun or have interest in so that even though they are meant to provide learning experiences for you, you are still engaged enough to where you look forward to working with them.
I think that this pattern is very important especially to a software engineer. No matter what company you work at there will eventually be a job where you are expected to make nearly no mistakes and you will not be able to try different solutions due to this expectation. But if you are able to experiment with different solutions on your own and see why they may not work or why they do work you can not only learn for yourself but you can also help the team you are working on evolve from using one standardized solution to using one that could be more efficient or faster.
From the blog CS@Worcester – Dylan Brown Computer Science by dylanbrowncs and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.