Software As She’s Developed

Architecture, Patterns, Town Planning

Any book on patterns must include the obligatory Christopher Alexander discussion. In my case, it’s brief, for the following reason:

One side benefit of this project has been to see how “patterns” are being accepted by the development community. The attention on the Ajax Patterns has always been on the “Ajax” and not the “Patterns”. This is a good thing and a welcome change from the late ’90s, when you not only had to explain what a pattern is, but also justify its existence. “Ajax” itself is a kind of pattern, one whose popularity is further evidence for the power of “just a name”. For these reasons, I’ll keep this section brief.

It’s brief, but it’s still there. The original book’s worth looking at in order to “get” patterns and pattern languages (as is the companion work, “The Timeless Way of Building”). Here are the best online references:

• List of all patterns, with full text and images for about a third of them
• Summary of all patterns

If you know something about these, you might want to mention it on wikipedia, current info on A Pattern Language is wanting.