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I’m not going to say you’re wrong because you are probably right :) but I don’t remember things happening in that order. JavaBeans was a super early Java spec a

I’m not going to say you’re wrong because you are probably right :) but I don’t remember things happening in that order. JavaBeans was a super early Java spec and it introduced some (IMO) poor idioms, such as the mandate to use getters/setters. And I certainly agree that JavaBeans had a huge influence over the rest of Java culture (for the worse IMO). But my memory is that pervasive use of Factories came along many years later, and seemed to be driven by the perceived needs of TDD, for example to provide instances of mock classes in unit tests. And I thought the factory pattern itself came from the GoF, but I might be misremembering. That said, I’m not trying to contradict you. It’s likely that there was more than one driver for the pervasive adoption of factories. In any case it was a bit of a nightmare for a while, hopefully things are improving there now.

cbm-vic-20 6y ago
On the other hand, JavaBeans was a simple pattern to understand and use, and the old OO dream of "software components that can be plugged together" actually worked: it was not uncommon for JavaBeans-compliant classes to work well together, even if the development teams never even heard of each other.
dragonwriter 6y ago
> And I thought the factory pattern itself came from the GoF, but I might be misremembering. It did, and GoF certainly influenced OOP outside of Java, too. But EJB created a need into which the Factory pattern was really the only solution. (GoF precedes EJB and even Java.) But certainly its not the only thing; Java hit popularity right around the time GoF was most influential; OOP languages whose ecosystems developed earlier (e.g., C++) or later (e.g., C#, though GoF-heavy code isn’t unheard of there) wouldn’t be as influenced by it, all things being equal. Java just had the perfect combination of language features, early specs like JEE (which included Beans), and timing to be naturally inclined for maximum naive GoFism.

cbm-vic-20 6y ago

On the other hand, JavaBeans was a simple pattern to understand and use, and the old OO dream of "software components that can be plugged together" actually worked: it was not uncommon for JavaBeans-compliant classes to work well together, even if the development teams never even heard of each other.

dragonwriter 6y ago

> And I thought the factory pattern itself came from the GoF, but I might be misremembering. It did, and GoF certainly influenced OOP outside of Java, too. But EJB created a need into which the Factory pattern was really the only solution. (GoF precedes EJB and even Java.) But certainly its not the only thing; Java hit popularity right around the time GoF was most influential; OOP languages whose ecosystems developed earlier (e.g., C++) or later (e.g., C#, though GoF-heavy code isn’t unheard of there) wouldn’t be as influenced by it, all things being equal. Java just had the perfect combination of language features, early specs like JEE (which included Beans), and timing to be naturally inclined for maximum naive GoFism.