Most likely the main reason "A Pattern Language" is popular here on HN is that it spawned a movement in software engineering: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft

Most likely the main reason "A Pattern Language" is popular here on HN is that it spawned a movement in software engineering: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_design_pattern https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_design_pattern (Plus the fact that it's a good book on its own terms. At least, it is so far as I can tell; I am not an architect and maybe some of the advice in it is actually terrible. But it seems almost always reasonable and frequently insightful, and it's well written, and the "pattern language" idea that software engineering borrowed from it is a nice one. (Though the software-engineering borrowings don't generally amount to actual pattern languages as opposed to miscellaneous grab-bags of alleged patterns.)