A Brief History of Patterns
The idea of software patterns originally came from the field of architecture. Christopher Alexander, an architect, wrote two revolutionary books that describe patterns in building architecture and urban planning: A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction (Oxford University Press, 1977) and The Timeless Way of Building (Oxford University Press, 1979). The ideas presented in those books are applicable to a number of fields outside of architecture, including software development.
In 1987, Ward Cunningham and Kent Beck used some of Alexander’s ideas to develop five patterns for user-interface design. They published a paper on the user-interface patterns at OOPSLA-87 entitled “Using Pattern Languages for Object-Oriented Programs.”
In the early 1990s, Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, John Vlissides, and Ralph Johnson began work on one of the most influential computer books of the last decade: Design Patterns. Published in 1994 and often called the “Gang of Four,” or GoF, book, it popularized the idea of patterns and was the greatest single influence on this book.
This book is a second edition. Additional patterns have been added that were not in the first edition. Many improvements suggested by readers of the first edition have been incorporated into the patterns. Examples have been changed to reflect more recent versions of Java.
Both editions of this book represent an evolution of patterns and objects since the GoF book was published. The GoF book used C++ and Smalltalk for its examples. This book uses Java and takes a rather Java-centric view of most things. When the GoF book was written, the Unified Modeling Language (UML) did not exist; now, it is widely accepted as the preferred notation for object-oriented analysis and design, and it is the notation used in this book.
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