--- title: The Visitor Pattern in Python (And Better Alternatives) description: 💡 Learn how to design great software in 7 steps: https://arjan.codes/designguide. The Visitor pattern has a reputation for being complicated, but the problem... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/the-visitor-pattern-in-python-and-better-alternatives--daizqwzk7 twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: The Visitor Pattern in Python (And Better Alternatives) | daily.dev og:description: 💡 Learn how to design great software in 7 steps: https://arjan.codes/designguide. The Visitor pattern has a reputation for being complicated, but the problem... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/the-visitor-pattern-in-python-and-better-alternatives--daizqwzk7 og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/dAIZqWzk7.png og:image:alt: The Visitor Pattern in Python (And Better Alternatives) og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # The Visitor Pattern in Python (And Better Alternatives) **[ArjanCodes](https://daily.dev/sources/arjancodes)** · 12 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary 💡 Learn how to design great software in 7 steps: https://arjan.codes/designguide. The Visitor pattern has a reputation for being complicated, but the problem it solves is actually quite simple: what happens when you keep adding new operations to the same set of objects? In this video, I use a document editor to compare several ways to solve that problem: methods, pattern matching, the classic Visitor pattern, a dispatch matrix, and Python’s `singledispatch`. More importantly, we’ll look at the trade-offs of each approach and when Visitor is actually worth using. 🔥 GitHub Repository: https://git.arjan.codes/2026/visitor. 💬 Join my Discord server: https://discord.arjan.codes. ⌨️ Keyboard I’m using: https://amzn.to/49YM97v. 🔖 Chapters: 0:00 Intro 1:23 Methods on the Nodes 2:41 Pattern Matching Groups Code by Operation 3:53 Classic Visitor 6:23 The Design Problem 7:06 The Dispatch Matrix Underneath Visitor 9:35 Let Python Maintain the Matrix 11:46 Final Thoughts #arjancodes #softwaredesign #python ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. 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