Re: What's a pattern?

From:

Lew <lew@lewscanon.com>

Newsgroups:

comp.lang.java.programmer

Date:

Wed, 5 Aug 2009 13:23:20 -0700 (PDT)

Message-ID:

<767a442a-d04f-4791-9153-a44e16c44d25@n2g2000vba.googlegroups.com>

On Aug 5, 3:30 pm, Jan Paulsen <janpaul...@stofanet.dk> wrote:

Stefan Ram wrote:

Jan Paulsen <janpaul...@stofanet.dk> writes:

That is, do you often say to your colleges that "I have
this pattern in my code" where you are not referring to a
well-defined pattern, but to some custom or, as I call it,
technique?

  =BB((Software )Design )Pattern=AB, after all, also is just a
  noun phrase made from common English words, so its meaning
  derives from the meaning of these words in a regular way.

  You might like to agree upon a specific term. =BBNamed
  pattern=AB or =BBDescribed pattern=AB comes to my mind, for a
  pattern that has been named and described in a work
  according to some convention.

                          ~~

  In the eighteenth century, there were so-called
  =BBpattern books=AB, see

    Heckscher, Morrison H., and Peter M. Kenny.
    "English Pattern Books in Eighteenth-Century America".
    In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History.
    New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000.

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/enpb/hd_enpb.htm

   (October 2003)

True, but I do believe that current (as was the case in 18th century)
use of "patterns" in software is especially "design patterns", and I
doubt anyone would disagree that these come from the GoF book. Or am I
wrong?

I disagree. The GoF borrowed the terminology and the format for their
"pattern language" from other domains. Many other sources besides GoF
have published design patterns. They hardly have a monopoly on the
term, the format, the concept or the usage.

It suffices to use just the English definition for "pattern".
<http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pattern>

--
Lew