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I don't think that you have much experience with software if you really believe that developers and especially people who architect and engineer software do not

I don't think that you have much experience with software if you really believe that developers and especially people who architect and engineer software do not ask such questions. We do, and the discussions do make it out into the wild from time to time. In particular we discuss these things in software involved with software interfaces, but even the discussions over the suitability of the relational database or the movement towards more functional programming languages touch on these themes. Just like in building architecture, it is a struggle to think differently, to see new possibilities and new ways of doing things. As the world changes, our context changes, and from time to time the change accumulates enough strength to become a new thing. We need to watch for those events because when the context changes, so should our patterns of design. Read up on Engels 2nd law of dialectics The law of the passage of quantitative changes into qualitative changes and Aristotle's Paradox of the Heap. Using patterns is not so terribly important. What is important is SEEING patterns, UNDERSTANDING patterns and CREATING new patterns.

tptacek 11y ago
The simplest response would be to point out that Alexander's Pattern Language was intended to (and did) have the effect of allowing ordinary people to design living and working spaces, in such a way that architects and builders could convert their designs directly into building plans. But no ordinary person can design software with a couple Abstract Factories, a Bridge, and a Strategy. That there are so few design patterns in the original GoF book is a tip-off (there are so many in Alexander's book that the best way to read it is to open to a random page and read either direction). The most devastating critique of the GoF pattern movement came from Norvig: http://norvig.com/design-patterns/ http://norvig.com/design-patterns/ The GoF pattern language doesn't relate software's design back to its users. It relates Smalltalk to C++ programmers.
- mcphage 11y ago
  > Alexander's Pattern Language was intended to (and did) have the effect of allowing ordinary people to design living and working spaces, in such a way that architects and builders could convert their designs directly into building plans Although he found the same problem as software design patterns suffer from—people assuming the pattern language is a buffet, and adopting whichever they felt like. Attempting to correct for that later led to his The Nature of Order series, which hasn't had any significant effect on the programming community.

tptacek 11y ago

The simplest response would be to point out that Alexander's Pattern Language was intended to (and did) have the effect of allowing ordinary people to design living and working spaces, in such a way that architects and builders could convert their designs directly into building plans. But no ordinary person can design software with a couple Abstract Factories, a Bridge, and a Strategy. That there are so few design patterns in the original GoF book is a tip-off (there are so many in Alexander's book that the best way to read it is to open to a random page and read either direction). The most devastating critique of the GoF pattern movement came from Norvig: http://norvig.com/design-patterns/ http://norvig.com/design-patterns/ The GoF pattern language doesn't relate software's design back to its users. It relates Smalltalk to C++ programmers.

mcphage 11y ago
> Alexander's Pattern Language was intended to (and did) have the effect of allowing ordinary people to design living and working spaces, in such a way that architects and builders could convert their designs directly into building plans Although he found the same problem as software design patterns suffer from—people assuming the pattern language is a buffet, and adopting whichever they felt like. Attempting to correct for that later led to his The Nature of Order series, which hasn't had any significant effect on the programming community.