21 February 2005

A reader commented on my

previous post about patternshare.org:

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The content on patternshare.org is weak. I don't think the content will ever be as strong as the books that the Authors are trying hock.   It seems like every good design choice these days are being labeled a "Pattern". Quite a shame.   Don't misunderstand... I'm a huge pattern evangilist.   We must keep in mind that patternshare.org can not replicate the patterns from the books. That would violate copyright law. The goal of patternshare.org is to be an index, to make it easier for you to figure out which books to buy and/or where in those books to find interesting patterns. That is an admirable goal and one that I think patternshare.org can accomplish.   In 50 years (or whenever it is that copyrights run out) we can put all the book content online and then we won’t have “weak” content. But up to that point I’m afraid we’re kind of stuck with the reality that the patterns are in books, and the books are copyrighted and that’s that…   Regarding the comment that "everything is being labeled a pattern" I agree. It is the current over-hyped trend in the architecture/design space - competing only with SOA.   But I think that the current pragmatic value of patterns is to provide an abstract language we humans can use to discuss our software designs. A language better than we have without “patterns”. Regardless of whether some of these "patterns" are really patterns or not, the fact is that the collective effort of all these books and articles is providing us with that common language - and thus is allowing us to communicate at a higher level than was possible even 3-5 years ago.