[PRL] may be

[Mitchell Wand]

Johan wrote:

> Just like the Visitor pattern, the usefullness of the GoF book isn't
> one particular implementation of the pattern, but the vocabulary to
> speak about a recurring programming idiom.

and Matthias replied:

> According to him, you just insulted the pattern community with an
> incredibly low blow.

I don't see how you concluded this.  After all, as you said:

> 2. The pattern community explicitly excluded academics because
> they didn't want "ideas that might work, one way or another, some
> day, perhaps" but things that have proven to work in three radically
> different context.

They certainly claimed to identify a useful idiom and several rather
different contexts in which it has been used successfully.

One could criticize the paper as a pattern paper on at least a couple
of grounds:

1.  It does not identify the problem that the pattern addresses, or
    factors that make it applicable or inapplicable.  GoF makes a big
    deal out of this part of the metalanguage for patterns.

2.  The examples that are given are so disparate that it becomes
    arguable whether they represent a single pattern.

If you believe either of these criticisms, then that might make it a
bad paper for a patterns conference.  But seeing it as a patterns
paper doesn't insult the patterns community.  Can you clarify?

(BTW, you wrote:

> they have now relaxed this attendance rule so that tenured
> professors who produce implementations for their ideas may attend.

What does this mean? Are there some invitation-only meetings out
there?  And do they require a letter from the Board of Trustees to
verify tenure ?-)

--Mitch