Pattern-Oriented Software Architecture, Volume 2, Patterns for Concurrent and Networked Objects

Chapter 8

Concluding Remarks

Writing is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, then it becomes a master, then it becomes a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster and fling him to the public.

Winston Churchill

This chapter calls on you, the reader, to snatch the baton from us and run the next leg in the race to create a more comprehensive pattern language for concurrent and networked object-oriented applications and middleware.

In this book we have documented the insights and patterns gained during dozens of years of developing and deploying these types of software systems. The resulting book represents much more than a catalog of our own experiences—it articulates the collective experience of the hundreds of researchers and developers we have worked with during the past two decades. Moreover, the patterns we present have been applied successfully in many systems we have not worked on directly, demonstrated by the extensive list of known uses presented throughout the book.

Even so, as we discussed in Section 6.2, A Pattern Language for Middleware and Applications, the patterns in this book capture only the foundation of a pattern language that will ultimately encompass all aspects of concurrency and networking. As with all pattern literature, the patterns presented here are perennially ‘works in progress’. We could only document the knowledge we possessed collectively ...