Language Weaknesses
A friend just del.icio.us‘d me this treat of an article. It lays out an argument that Design Patterns are really just evidences of language weaknesses.
This really Makes Sense to me. I dig that I’ve never really considered this in the ever before. It’s a different perspective but almost kind of obvious.
That’s not to say I’m jumping off the patterns bandwagon. Haha no way! The thing to remember is that it takes years for languages to go from concept to widespread use. Once a language gains momentum, it’s going to be used heavily and for a long time into the future. Minor flaws, quirks or missing language features that weren’t recognised before the 1.0 release won’t stop a language in its tracks.
Also, as mainstream languages evolve and are supersceded, the most valuable patterns will continue to be absorbed into the language. Over time, the patterns that we use most commonly are more complex and probably less “general” in both explanation and solution. This makes them more difficult to roll into a language and become transperant to the developer.
I wonder how many patterns from GoF or PEAA could go easily into a next-gen Java/C# or Python/Ruby?
