Object-Oriented Design Heuristics

Chapter 10. The Relationship Between Heuristics and Patterns

Heuristics Versus Patterns

At a workshop during OOPSLA '87, Kent Beck first brought up Christopher Alexander's text, A Pattern Language [20, 21]. In this text, Alexander attempts to capture the subconscious aesthetic qualities of architecture by using an invented pattern language. Beck suggested that we look for something similar to capture interesting patterns in good object-oriented design. Recently, a large amount of effort has been applied to this topic by Kent Beck, Richard Helm, Erich Gamma, Ralph Johnson, Bruce Anderson, James Coplien, Grady Booch, Frank Buschmann, Robert Martin, and many others. These researchers have examined patterns from many different angles, ranging from ...