ActionScript 3.0 Design Patterns

148 | Chapter 4: Decorator Pattern

Decorating with Deadly Sins and Heavenly Virtues

Action gaming pits different kinds of heroes and villains against one another, and the

combatants have different weapons and shields. That is, they’redecoratedwith dif-

ferent characteristics and abilities. In order to see how to add some more functions to

a Decorator pattern, what could be more appropriate than pitting good against evil?

Table 4-1 shows a list of deadly sins and heavenly virtues. (The list is considerably

updated from Dante’sInfernoand Prudentius’ epic poem,Psychomachia, both of

whom I understand were using Commodore-64’s to make their lists.)

Thinking about what has been presented so far in this chapter, the first thing that

comes to mind is a property that describes each of the deadly sins and heavenly vir-

tues. That’s easy enough, because just like the paper doll example, all we have to do

is to assign a property value to each decorator. However, we can do more with the

Decorator design pattern, as you’ll see in the next two sections.

Table 4-1. Decorations of good and evil

Deadly Sin Description Virtue Description

Rage Uncontrolled anger—striking out at

syntax errors

Compassion Caring about others—Helping procedural

programmers transition to OOP

Malice Meanness, malevolence, ill will, cruelty,

and hatred toward others–unkind

remarks about Linux.

Courage Doing the right thing regardless of the

danger—taking on object-oriented pro-

gramming

Obfuscation Hiding the truth— redefining an act,

knowledge by adding confusion—coding

without comments

Hope Belief in eventual success of good over

evil—you really can complete the project on

time

Arrogance Excessive pride, not considering others’

beliefs, feelings, or knowledge—belief

that Microsoft Windows is the only real OS

Justice A fair balance and even chance—using

Windows, Mac OS, and Linux

Prejudice Judging others on the basis of stereotypes

and not their actions—teasing Mac users

Openness Capacity to consider new knowledge, ideas,

and contrary ideas—writing a program on a

Mac

Dogmatisms Narrow, inflexible belief even in light of

evidence to the contrary—continue to

use procedural programming methods

Integrity Maintaining values even when tempted to

abandon them for short term gains—fore-

going hacks even though they’d get the job

done and the client would never know

Indifference Seeing suffering and doing nothing or not

even caring to help—unwilling to offer

help in learning OOP

Diligence Willingness to stick with an especially diffi-

cult task to complete it—learning design

patterns