Java Design Patterns : History

It Came From Outer Space... via U.C. Berkeley

The inspiration for design patterns in software development is usually attributed to Christopher Alexander, a professor of architecture at U.C. Berkeley. In the late ‘70s, he published several books that introduced the concept of patterns and provided a catalog of patterns for architectural design.

Alexander's work sparked interest in the object-oriented (OO) community, and within the next decade, a number of pioneers had developed patterns for software design. Kent Beck and Ward Cunningham were among the first, discussing a set of Smalltalk design patterns in a presentation at the 1987 OOPSLA conference. James Coplien was another who actively promoted the tenets of patterns, writing a book about C++ idioms, or patterns for C++ development, in the early ’90s.

OOPSLA was an excellent venue for the growing patterns community, since it offered an environment for them to share their ideas. Another important forum for the evolution of the patterns movement was the Hillside Group, established by Kent Beck and Grady Booch.

Probably the best-known contribution to the popularity of design patterns was the 1995 book Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software. The authors—Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson, and John Vlissides—are also commonly known as the “Gang of Four” or GoF. The book introduced a comprehensive pattern language, and gave C++ examples for the patterns discussed. Another important work that gave momentum to patterns was the book Pattern-Oriented Software Architecture, A System of Patterns, by Buschmann, Meunier, Rohnert, Sommerlad and Stal.