CSC/ECE 517 Fall 2011/ch7 7d rt

AntiPatterns in Software Development

Introduction

The term antipattern was coined by Andrew Koenig in 1995. He was inspired by a story told about Thomas Edison's many failed attempts to find a suitable material for the filament of a light bulb. When asked if he was discouraged, Edison replied that indeed he was not; he now knew hundreds of items that wouldn't work.

Koenig believed that the same philosophy could be applied to software development. As he studied the design patterns presented by the GoF, he felt that it was just as important to point out what not to do as well as what to do. He named these non-solutions antipatterns. He defined an antipattern as "just like a pattern, except that instead of a solutionit gives something that looks superficially like a solution but isn't one."

References

<ref name = koenig> Koenig, Andrew (March/April 1995). "Patterns and Antipatterns". Journal of Object-Oriented Programming 8 (1): 46–48.; was later re-printed in the: Rising, Linda (1998). The patterns handbook: techniques, strategies, and applications. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press. p. 387. ISBN 0-521-64818-1. "Anti-pattern is just like pattern, except that instead of solution it gives something thats looks superficially like a solution, but isn't one." </ref>