2 ms·

Thanks for your reasoned and thoughtful reply. I've voted you up. However, I disagree with your central thesis. Programming is the stringing together of prede

Thanks for your reasoned and thoughtful reply. I've voted you up. However, I disagree with your central thesis. Programming is the stringing together of predefined constructs. However, like all matters of taste, the hard part is when things are appropriate. Reading the rest of your post as "GoF does not adequately teach when to use redirection, and other techniques of abstraction, leading to sophistry instead of sophistication," I completely agree with what you have to say. The junior programmers that I know who have read GoF DP have been subject to my endless bashing over the head with the simplicity stick, and so I hope that they use indirection and abstract techniques only as appropriate.

gruseom 18y ago
I disagree with your central thesis. Programming is the stringing together of predefined constructs. I see what you mean. Yes, but in not the sense I meant. My point is that the predefined constructs in the GoF book are at varying levels of abstraction and granularity, and mostly can't effectively be strung together in the way the book implied. That's my attempt to explain why people mostly created messes when they tried (an empirical observation). If DP were actually about "indirection and abstract techniques" per se, that would be fine. But it's more than that. It's a cookbook of specific clumps of indirection and abstraction. And I don't think programs can be decomposed into those clumps or composed out of them.