Posted by Damien Pollet Sun, 01 Oct 2006 19:12:43 GMT
…explains Mark Dominus:
When we identify and document one, that should not be the end of the story. Rather, we should have the long-term goal of trying to understand how to improve the language so that the pattern becomes invisible or unnecessary.
Examples are the iterator methods in Smalltalk and Ruby, or the singleton using once in Eiffel…
(via lesscode)
Posted by Damien Pollet Sun, 16 Jul 2006 21:32:00 GMT
I recently got a case of the stuff-acquisition-syndrome, said stuff being books actually:
Hopefully I’ll read (completely, that is) all of them, one day ;-)
Update: Yesterday I also received The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst. The print quality amazing and on a beautiful paper, even better than my copies of Simmons’ Ilium and Olympos. Hardcover books rule!
Posted by Damien Pollet Wed, 27 Jul 2005 11:47:00 GMT
I got my hands on my lab’s copy of The Timeless Way of Building by Christopher Alexander. It’s the first book in a series on patterns in architecture that was the inspiration for design patterns in object-oriented software engineering — the GoF book.
A very nice feature of the book is that you can go through it really fast without loosing the message:
What lies in this book is perhaps more important as a whole than in its details. If you have only an hour to spend on it, it makes much more sense to read the whole book roughly in that hour, than to read only the first two chapters in detail.
[…]
Then, if you want to go into detail, you will know where to go, but always in the context of the whole.
The book isn’t even started, you get a glimpse of what it’s all about…
Edit: it’s striking how Alexander’s thoughts apply to software development, and how the book arguments in favor of organic, agile, open methods, where everyone is a developer and shares knowledge.
What also comes to mind is how much the game of Go embodies the idea of distinct patterns, that reinforce each other, and that generate strength — the quality without a name. Design patterns are the joseki of software engineering :-)
