Meeting C++ 2026 - Design Patterns - The Most Common Misconceptions (3 of N)

Klaus Iglberger

On Day 3 at 0:00 (CET/Berlin) in Track A [Saphir Room and online]

Design patterns are everywhere, as they are the key to managing dependencies between software entities. Thus knowledge about these is an essential part of every programmers toolbox. But despite their fundamental importance, there are some common misconceptions about them, in particular about several of the most often used design patterns.

In this talk, we’ll take a close look at the Decorator and Adapter design patterns. Both are very commonly used — there are for instance various applications within the C++ standard library — and both have clearly defined applications and responsibilities. However, since they are structurally similar, they are often confused — even in the standard library.

In this talk we’ll shed some light on these two design patterns and their misconceptions. We’ll see several examples of them, also within the C++ standard library, and learn how to properly distinguish between them.

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