General talk about software patterns

["Mike Beedle" <beedlem AT e-architects.com>]

> doubt that your post is going to reach your target audience. 

Andre,

 

Thank you for confirming that it did reach my “intended audience” …

 

I bet you, you didn’t know you signed up for understanding cognitive processes when you first

got interested into software patterns.  Please tell me more about you and your background to see if

I recognize a pattern, but from my first read …. you must be a clever bit-head with a narrow view.

 

That’s the point I am trying to make -- you and the other bit-heads of the software patterns world,

including Jesus, are my “intended audience”…..   You are who I am trying to reach.

 

Why?  I am trying to remind software developers about the relationships of patterns

(software or otherwise), to cognitive processes, and the works of Christopher Alexander, because

that is the foundational and seminal background work that you need to understand and use

 patterns – software or otherwise.

 

Let me start by arguing that software is knowledge…. And that software development is therefore

very much related to knowledge creation, knowledge management, and socializing and sharing this

knowledge.  This translates well into sharing a language (GOF+POSA{1..2}+PLOP{1..4}+ etc.), and

living within a special software culture – you can call it the Agile Software development if you will,

which are the essential traits of the Alexanderian paradigm: 

 

1) build through patterns in pattern languages (APL), (e.g. MVC, etc.)

2) build through an iterative process (TOE), e.g. Scrum,  

3) produce artifacts with quality, beauty, easy of use, comfort, and other

Ilities (durability, flexibility, availability, resilience, etc.) (TTWOB), (e.g. Emacs)

 

This is the picture of developing software with software patterns in the large, but also, in the small,

what a single developer does is:

 

recognition of contexts – where to apply the pattern (e.g. is this a good place to apply “visitor”?

pattern recognition, -- when I am seeing the animal e.g. is this a “command”?

pattern inventorying – what patterns are available and when should I use them?  In what sequences

or combinations?

pattern usage – how do I apply a pattern? e.g. how do I implement a “façade”?

resulting context prediction – where will I land after I refactor my code into the pattern Z?

And a lot of testing that it did have the desired effect.

etc.

 

But all of these are cognitive activities!!!  People need to know patterns, learn patterns, memorize patterns,

store patterns, recognize patterns, etc.; but the most essential quality about a pattern is its “sameness”,

or similarity constraints (Alexander, Eden, Grenander, etc.)

 

Therefore, I claim that “A Generative Theory of Similarity”, and specially one that quotes Alexander,

should definitely be interesting to some patterns’ practitioners (software or otherwise!), but not necessarily all.

 

… and again, if you are not interested in “A Generative Theory of Similarity” don’t read it,

but please stop the whining…..  

 

Any more “positive feedback” out there?

 

Think about this… the simple fact that the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology is interested in Alexanderian patterns is a big WIN for patterns….

 

I am the only fool to think this is “good news”?

 

- Mike

 

 

---

From: Andre [mailto:andre.2995 AT gmail.com]
Sent: Tuesday, February 14, 2006 4:41 PM
To: Mike Beedle
Cc: Patterns Discussion
Subject: Re: [patterns-discussion] A Generative Theory of Similarity (withreferences to Alexander)

 

 

>From the above page I quote:

" patterns-discussion AT cs.uiuc.edu is for discussion of patterns in general."

But you _do_ have a choice... , if you are not interested in the subject,
simply don't read my posts, and don't respond to them.  It is that easy,

- Mike

The page header states:

patterns-discussion -- General talk about software patterns
 

I doubt that your post is going to reach your target audience. 

Andre