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First, please note that this is from 2002. Wish you could edit the title. The last slide in the series notes that the talk gets heavily flamed on. It gets flam
by quantified 6y ago
First, please note that this is from 2002. Wish you could edit the title.
The last slide in the series notes that the talk gets heavily flamed on. It gets flamed on for good reason, IMHO.
From its intro:
>
Description
The "design patterns" movement in software claims to have been inspired by the works of architect Christopher Alexander. But an examination of Alexander's books reveals that he was actually talking about something much more interesting.
The presentation has two parts: a takedown of the Iterator (which kinda misses the point of iterator, it’s not purely a way to implement for-loops), and then a description of how Alexander had different goals than the GoF in their book.
Ok... the book isn’t Alexander. Though the patterns community was on the path to trying to achieve similar goals, just this happened to be a handbook of patterns that were more recently discovered. Software architecture is not as well-codified a field as physical architecture, needs a century or two to catch up.
The real complaint is that the book is not a “Pattern Language”, or the same as the famous Chris Alexander book. That’s not in the title of this talk. It’s also not really what the speaker spends much time on. Saying the C++ macro system blows goat dick doesn’t advance arguments about the difference between a handbook of patterns and anything else. Inspired by is absolutely true, inspiration has many effects and forms.
However, GoF is also about discovering and communicating the patterns you discover, and contains useful examples. GHJV spend energy describing how the patterns were identified, clarified and named, and they use this language in presenting the examples.
Meanwhile the author of these slides seems to thing it’s the copy side of a copy-paste command, which it definitely is not. There is no one true Iterator, nor Factory, Visitor, Facade, or any other pattern listed.
So he misses the point by quite a margin, IMHO.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- vikingcaffiene 6y agoI don't know why you are getting down voted. For what its worth I appreciate the analysis. I kind of feel like this post shouldn't exist without the author taking the time to explain his POV better than a few bullet points on a slide. The postscript kind of goes there but its not enough IMO. What we are left with here reduces whatever his point is to a few reductive statements that probably over simplify his arguments and leave the rest of us either nodding emphatically or shaking our heads in disgust because its just generalized enough to confirm any pre-existing bias we already have. In other words this wont change any minds. I guess the one good thing to come out of reading this is that I'll pick up that "Pattern Language" book and give it a read. Perhaps this post will gain some value in retrospect with that context.
- mjd 6y ago> I kind of feel like this post shouldn't exist without the author taking the time to explain his POV better than a few bullet points on a slide. I agree. It was a five-minute throwaway talk. Here's the same guy writing a better article on a related subject: [Design Patterns of 1972](https://blog.plover.com/prog/design-patterns.html https://blog.plover.com/prog/design-patterns.html)
- nocman 6y agoHi Mark! I love how you say "Here's the same guy..." like it was someone other than yourself. I was going to point out that the beginning of the article says that this was a "five minute long talk" given at YAPC, and did not represent your complete thoughts on the matter. But you saved me the trouble. :-D (edited for unintentional formatting)
- quantified 6y agoI get surprising downvotes a lot. Well, thank you for noticing!
- alisonkisk 6y agoIt's sad that we're bringing up a 20 year old throwaway presentation for ridicule. This article shouldn't have been posted.
- quantified 6y agoI agree. I think it was brought up for thought and discussion, and the first comment was strongly critical. If there are other thoughts on it, hope they get shared too.