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Patterns of Software: Tales from the Software Community

by
Richard P. Gabriel (Author)
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Richard P. Gabriel (Author)
4.3 out of 5 stars 17 customer reviews
ISBN-13: 978-0195121230
ISBN-10: 0195121236
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Product Details

  • Paperback: 256 pages
  • Publisher: Oxford University Press (May 28, 1998)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0195121236
  • ISBN-13: 978-0195121230
  • Product Dimensions: 6.1 x 1 x 9 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
  • Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #588,056 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Top Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsLisp versus C
By A Customer on June 6, 2000
Format: Paperback
There is an excitement in reading what everyone else is afraid to say---and the software world is full of taboos.
I passed up "Patterns of Software" a million times in the stores; because of the title, I thought it was yet another book on software Patterns (capital P) in the vein of "Design Patterns" and other recent missives on high-level design.
Then I read Richard Gabriel's essay "Worse is Better," available on the web. Though the tone can be bitter and depressing at times, I was immediately hooked on this rare find: a hardcore Lisp person making honest criticisms of both the philosophy and practice of the Lisp world (i.e. academe and the AI industry.)
His book is even more rewarding than the essay, because in it Gabriel offers a social theory of software. He explains the overwhelming success and enduring popularity of the C language, but, refreshingly, he does this without taking the easy way out and simply insulting the intelligence of everyone who is not a Lisp user. Gabriel's lessons come from the real world---documented in this semi-autobiographical book---and he didn't always like the answer.
While it does discuss Patterns (more deeply and more critically than almost anything else, in my opinion) it is primarily about some common patterns (lowercase p) in the software industry.
Such as: why does the "best product" often fail miserably in the marketplace? After the enormous success of UNIX in the 70's and 80's (and the failure of almost everything else) this became an important question. Especially for those who wished to succeed UNIX.
Gabriel's answer turns on what has been perhaps been said best by writer Virginia Postrel: "Quality is not one-dimensional.Read more ›
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4.0 out of 5 starsA painfully honest look at life in the software business
By Andrew T. Wilson on June 8, 1999
Format: Paperback
There are many people who can operate a word processor with sufficient skill to create a book about computers and software that someone will publish; there are only a few published authors in our business who are also truly good writers. Richard Gabriel is one of the latter. In "Performance and Evaluation of Lisp Systems," he showed he could create a lively book on possibly the single most esoteric subject imaginable. In "Patterns of Software," he demonstrates his skill in essays ranging from patterns in Turkish carpets to the hard lessons of software startups, from the joys of riding cross-country in a Corvette at 125 mph to the often demeaning life of a graduate student.
The last essay alone, "Money through Innovation Reconsidered," would justify purchase of the book. Gabriel does a masterful job of analyzing one of the apparent paradoxes of software engineering: that the "best-engineered" software products can be spectacular failures in the market (e.g. Common Lisp, for reasons Gabriel dissects in depth; and, remember Ada?), while the most successful products have a ball-of-mud-that-just-grew quality (yesterday DOS; today Linux).
The more time you have been schooled in "the right way" to build software, the harder this truth is to accept; but it is truth nonetheless, for reasons Gabriel lays out succinctly. The essay deserves a place near Arthur C. Clarke's classic SF short story "Superiority." Read both and you'll see the connection.Read more ›
Comment 7 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
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3.0 out of 5 starsMore chatty than techie
By wiredweird HALL OF FAMETOP 1000 REVIEWER on July 14, 2005
Format: Paperback Verified Purchase
Gabriel has collected a number of his "Journal of Object Oriented Programming" columns into a thoughtful and readable anthology. The columns have been grouped into a few post-facto categories, decided long after the essays were first written. As may be expected, some of the individual columns do more for me than others. The section on his glorious rise and glorious falls into the `others' category, but I didn't read this to improve my understanding of Gabriel himself.

The better parts of this book reflect on software reuse, conceptual compression, subclassing, and abstraction. Nearly ten years old at this writing, the book reflects wisdom sorely won during the era of extravagant subclassing, before a better balance with aggregation was achieved. He also describes, at length, the evils of bad abstractions - the kinds that don't include all they should, and do include much of what they shouldn't. Unfortunately, his sourness on subclassing and abstraction prevents him from detailing their proper uses. "Abstraction is about ignorance," he quotes, but doesn't distinguish helpful from un-helpful forms of knowledge and un-knowledge, at least not in ways I can use.

The most useful of these essays emphasizes the value of writing - I mean prose, intended for human consumption. Perhaps Gabriel is a bit strident in stating the importance of person to person expression, but perhaps neglect of the topic warrants an exaggerated response.

This book includes a special treat, a six-page foreword by Christopher Alexander - the architect who introduced the concept of a Design Pattern. If you don't already know, he's a real building-type architect, not just a lead engineer of some kind.Read more ›
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 starsCame for the software wisdom, stayed for the stories

Richard Gabriel is well known in software circles for his writings on
the relevance of software completenes in the market, and as the
founder of a startup that produced a... Read more

Published on September 28, 2013 by Ulas Tuerkmen
5.0 out of 5 starsGr8 reading!

Well written book. Must be read if you are interesting in Quility and Efficiency.
It is not about patterns itself, but about quility w/o name.

Published on July 30, 2012 by Konstantin Vlasenko
5.0 out of 5 starsShould be more widely read

I casually started reading this book and couldn't put it down. The extraordinary depth of thought is refreshing, and the conclusions he came to in the 1990s are interesting to... Read more

Published on May 30, 2012 by James Blomo
5.0 out of 5 starsVery Thoughtful

I don't have anything to add to the already glowing reviews of this book other than to say that it is also available on the web at [...]

Published on April 1, 2005 by D. S. Matthews
4.0 out of 5 starsExcellent book

One of the best books out there on the understanding of patterns. Along with "Permaculture, a Designers manual" (see my review) and "A pattern language" this... Read more

Published on April 27, 2001 by Governor General
5.0 out of 5 starsIf you're a programmer read it all, if not, must read Part 4

I was attracted to this book by its title since I bought another book, Design Patterns. The first parts were good, but still I am not so sure I followed the author (after all I was... Read more

Published on February 19, 2001 by Weimin Chen
5.0 out of 5 starsGood commentary

This book is one of the best personal commentaries written about the Computer industry as a business and culture that consists of people. Read more

Published on August 19, 2000 by David N. Reiss
5.0 out of 5 starsStands still, yet goes everywhere at once.

This is a hard book to review. I think it's *mainly* an autobiography, but then it's so much more. This man has obviously lived a lot of life and written a lot of software, and... Read more

Published on April 25, 2000 by Patrick Carroll
4.0 out of 5 starsAn autobiography

In general, I was surprised at how much of the book was an autobiography. While I found most of the author's experience appropriate, I thought the chapters about Lucid's demise... Read more

Published on February 5, 2000
4.0 out of 5 starsMany fascinating anecdotes about real-world software design.

This book is a very interesting and entertaining read for anyone who is involved (or is thinking of getting involved) in serious software development. Read more

Published on May 20, 1998 by Michael Vanier

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