Design Patterns vs. Language Design

Joseph Gil and David H. Lorenz

The Faculty of Computer Science,
Technion-Israel Institute of Technology,
Technion City, Haifa 32000, Israel
{yogi|david}@CS.Technion.AC.IL

Abstract. This report investigates the relationship between design patterns and programming languages. A comparison is carried out between the usual track of programming languages development and the discovery of patterns. We argue that there are fundamental differences between the two. We offer a taxonomy of patterns based on how far they are from becoming actual language features. An observation is made that many patterns are in essence a set of rules governing the relations between two objects in run time. An initial multi-dimensional classification of such relationship is proposed.

J. Bosch, S. Mitchell (Eds.): Object-Oriented Technology ECOOP'97 Workshop Reader ECOOP'97 Workshops, Jyväskylä, Finland, June 1997. Proceedings   LNCS 1357