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'Design Patterns' Receives ACM SIGPLAN Award

Posted by timothy on from the good-idea-guys dept.

bth writes "ACM's Special Interest Group on Programming Languages (SIGPLAN) recently awarded the 2005 Programming Languages Achievement Award to Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson, and John Vlissides (known as the 'Gang of Four') for their creation of 'Design Patterns' (the computer science book and the subfield at the intersection of programming languages and software engineering). The annual award recognizes an individual (or individuals) who has (have) made a significant and lasting contribution to the field of programming languages."

1 of 223 comments (clear)

  1. worth it for one reason by bmac · · Score: 5, Informative

    The patterns themselves are not really that
    groundbreaking, IMO; the genius of the book
    is the perspective on looking at software
    as pattern definitions and then their use
    in different ways and places in software.

    The part that every OO developer should
    ingrain in their brain is to

    Prefer composition to inheritance.

    Good Lord, people love their inheritance
    when there are very, very rare situations
    that call for it. (Composition, btw, is
    where a data structure is used as a data
    member of the class).

    What it recommends is that instead of this:

    class cElement : cParent { ... }

    use this:

    class cElement {
          cParent mParent; ...
    }

    Inheritance is so friggin abused by OO
    developers, it is ridiculous.

    So, my recommendation is to read the first
    50 pages or so, which is their general
    perspective on programming. After that,
    it's just details about the patterns they
    have encountered in their careers.

    Peace & Blessings,
    bmac