[PRL] may be

Matthias Felleisen matthias at ccs.neu.edu
Thu Nov 6 22:36:30 EST 2003


My message had nothing to do with David's paper anymore. You will
have to ask Dick about the details. I intend to invite him out. -- 
Matthias


On Thursday, November 6, 2003, at 11:14 AM, Mitchell Wand wrote:

> 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



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