New ideas go through stages of acceptance, both from within and without. From within, the sequence moves from “barely seeing” a pattern several times, the

New ideas go through stages of acceptance, both from within and without. From within, the sequence moves from “barely seeing” a pattern several times, then noting it but not perceiving its “cosmic” significance, then using it operationally in several areas, then comes a “grand rotation” in which the pattern becomes the center of a new way of thinking, and finally, it turns into the same kind of inflexible religion that it originally broke away from. From without, as Schopenhauer noted, the new idea is first denounced as the work of the insane, in a few years it is considered obvious and mundane, and finally the original denouncers will claim to have invented it. So true, sadly. I deeply regret that today, many people interviewing for programming jobs get grilled over their knowledge of this particular OO design pattern or that, while neither the interviewer nor the applicant may realize that some of these "patterns" are just dogmas invented to deal with particular language limitations of (older versions of) Java, and entirely different patterns (or even paradigms) are available if only one takes the time to look past the boundaries of one's preferred (or prescribed from above) programming language. IMO, prospective programmers should be invited to show true creativity and insight, not to just queue up to create the (N+1)-th CORBA framework. Structured programming, modules, OOP, FP, ever more elaborate type systems, whatever next new thing is going to be seen as the One True Way, I still believe that Socrates will have the last laugh (...or grin)... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socratic_method http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socratic_method