Give Christopher His Dues
February 10th, 2006[ Software Development ]
Years back, I took a 3 day course on Design Patterns. I’ve never been successful in acquiring knowledge in the classroom format, however, the course did provide a thorough introduction to the idea of design patterns as applied to software development.
It’s always irked me how little props are given by software folks to the originator of the idea of patterns, that being Christopher Alexander. While the concept of reusing patterns of problem solving have been around longer than dirt, it was Alexander who formalized them with his books The Timeless Way of Building, A Pattern Language, and The Oregon Experiment. I believe the rest of the history consists of Kent Beck and Ward Cunningham playing with the application of these ideas to software design back in 1987, presenting their results at OOPSLA that year.
Some pattern related links…
Design Patterns Java Companion
Patterns and Software: Essential Concepts and Terminology
Pattern Depot
Chapter 1 from the book – Pattern Hatching
JavaWorld Java Design Patterns
Design Patterns in Java Reference and Example Site