General talk about software patterns

["Ralph Johnson" <johnson AT cs.uiuc.edu>]

On Fri, Apr 18, 2008 at 1:22 AM, Pont, Michael J. <michael.pont AT tesco.net> wrote:

Dear Pattern people,

Some of you may be aware of my book "Patterns for Time-Triggered Embedded Systems".  This book (originally published in 2001) describes a pattern language (which is, in my view, reasonably complete) for creating reliable embedded systems.

Following an agreement with the publisher (a polite way of saying that the book is out of print), you can now download copies - free of charge - from the following WWW site:

http://www.tte-systems.com/pttes.php

Over the coming months, my aim is to annotate this book (later thoughts on the "core patterns" in this collection, etc).

This book has always been one of my favorites!  I like it partly because it teaches a style of programming that was completely new to me.  It is a classic Alexandrian top-to-bottom book.  It first asks what you want to build, then shows you how to connect to I/O devices and moves to code.  I have always wanted to use it on a real project but have never found one that was compelling.  I've advised some student projects that used it.  I think the idea of building a $1 computer is so cool, and it is amazing to see how much you can do with such a little computer.

Is there a wiki or a mailing list for the book?  Is there a web site that people use to share designs?

On the one hand, most people interested in patterns are interested in business computing.  On the other hand, this book shows that patterns are just as applicable to real-time embedded systems.

-Ralph Johnson