[PRL] may be

[Johan Ovlinger]

Matthias Felleisen (Thu, 06 Nov 2003 10:36:35 EST) proclaims:
> According to him, you just insulted the pattern community with an
> incredibly low blow.

Did not!

> Let me explain:
> 
> 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.
(*)

Ja! This is what the EA paper did. Whether you agree with any one
given example is another matter, but they hardly pulled it from thin
air.

Perhaps the examples they cite are not concrete enough to qualify as
"pattern cases".  Fair enough. I really didn't set out to make a
strong case for EA being a pattern instance.  Rather, I meant to point
out the value of identifying and labeling existing concepts, and also
to make the case that the EA paper fell into this category (which
includes patterns) rather than the dreamy "Things I wish would work"
ideas category.

> 5. The community is extremely vibrant and useful to many companies.
> The company that is running these PLOP workshops is out of money,
> because of the demand.

I can't decide between sarcasm and edito here. 
 
> P.S.  I truly dislike it when people object to speaking the truth
> with "that's just a rant."  Sometimes the truth has to be out there,
> even if it hurts.

Text lacks the nuances and body language of person-to-person speech.
It is sometimes useful to inject these out-of-band signals explicitly
into the text, to alert the reader.  If I were a better author, and if
I could depend on readers to read my words carefully I could probably
get away with more subtle means. But I'm not.

*shrug*

Johan

(*) On a side note, this exclusion explains why there was a sudden
drop-off papers putting the cart before the horse: proposals for
programming patterns.