4 September 2006
Writing Software Patterns
Posted by Mikhail Esteves under: General .
For me a pattern is primarily a way to chunk up advice about a topic. Chunking is important because there’s such a huge amount of knowledge you need to write software. As a result there needs be ways to divide knowledge up so you don’t need to remember it all – what you need is to be able to get at a particular chunk of knowledge when you need it. Only then do you need details.
The solution provides a useful focus for the chunking. With some young eager programmer asking some grizzly veteran (i.e. anyone over thirty) how to deal with a particular situation and hear the veteran say “oh – you’ll need an identity map there”. The colleague can then look up identity map in some suitable patterns book.
So to make this chunking work each pattern should name a solution. This solution should be concrete, at least at the level of discussion we are talking about. You should be able to go away and use the pattern once you’re given the reference. If you’re successful the name should enter the vocabulary of the profession. It can take a while to do this, but when you say ‘decorator’ any reasonable professional should know what you mean.
Patterns should have recurrence, which means the solution must be applicable in lots of different situations. If you are talking about something that’s a one-off, then it’s not adding the name to the profession’s vocabulary.
