Series
The Patterns Series
The Gang of Four catalogue, one pattern per post, taken as a description of what programmers kept building rather than a prescription: the problem each one solves, what it costs in indirection, when it is the wrong answer, and what a modern language hands you instead. Hexagonal architecture closes the series. Part of Under the Hood.
What a Design Pattern Is, and Is Not
The Gang of Four wrote down what C++ and Smalltalk programmers kept building in 1994. It is a description of practice at a moment, not a prescription, and several of its entries are workarounds for a language feature that did not exist yet: a first-class function dissolves Strategy and Command, implicit interfaces dissolve much of Adapter, a range loop is Iterator. Several others describe structural decisions no syntax removes. Which is which, and why the vocabulary is still worth having.
Coming soon