Abstract
Patterns have a longstanding identity in the scientific community as results of a phenomenon called symmetry breaking. This article proposes a formalism for software patterns through connections from software patterns to symmetry and symmetry breaking. Specifically, we show (1) the ties from Alexander’s work to symmetry and symmetry-breaking foundations; (2) many programming languages provide constructs that support symmetry; (3) software patterns are the results of symmetry breaking, compensating for design shortfalls in programming languages. The proposed pattern formalism may be useful as a foundation for pattern taxonomies, and to differentiate patterns as a design discipline from heuristics, rules, and arbitrary micro-architectures.
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Coplien, J.O., Zhao, L. (2001). Symmetry Breaking in Software Patterns. In: Butler, G., Jarzabek, S. (eds) Generative and Component-Based Software Engineering. GCSE 2000. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 2177. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-44815-2_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-44815-2_4
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