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PLoP 2013 is in cooperation with ACM.

Pattern Languages of Programs (PLoP®) conference is a premier event for pattern authors and pattern enthusiasts to gather, discuss and learn more about patterns and software development.

Preliminary versions of these papers were work-shopped at Pattern Languages of Programs (PLoP) ’13 October 23rd – 26th, 2013, Allerton Park/Monticello, IL, USA. Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission. Copyright is held by the authors.

ISBN: 978-1-941652-00-8

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Welcome to PLoP 2013

Welcome back to the beautiful Allerton Park in Monticello Illinois (the place where the PLoP conferences started) and to PLoP 2013, the 20th Conference on Pattern Languages of Programs, a premier event for pattern authors and pattern enthusiasts to gather, discuss and learn more about patterns, pattern writing, pattern reviewing, shepherding, software development, collaboration, and more!

The conference program offers a rich set of activities that altogether promote a friendly and effective environment to share expertise, and to give and get feedback from fellow authors. The pre-conference activities start Wednesday (October 23rd) at the Boot Camp, a special session aimed at people new to patterns and/or PLoP, led by Rebecca Wirfs-Brock and Joe Yoder. The main conference starts on Thursday morning (October 24th).

The Writers' Workshops are the primary focus of our time at PLoP and it will be during these that we will discuss and review each other’s papers in a very fruitful way. We have six groups of five to six papers each, which were selected from an initial set of 50 submissions after a considerable period of shepherding. Papers of the Writing Group will have the opportunity of being evolved during PLoP with the mentoring of experienced pattern writers.

We are very happy to present an invited talk by Ward Cunningham, well known for his involvement in the development of the wiki technology. Ward shares with us his ideas on “Wiki as Pattern Language”, hereby also presenting new ideas on federated wikis. A second invited talk will be given by Jenny Quillien, who worked together with Christopher Alexander for several years during the writing of The Nature of Order. In her talk “What Christopher Alexander thought was wrong with A Pattern Language and How to Fix It”, she’ll share her insights in a pragmatic and hands-on way.

There will be two focus groups on Saturday where participants are active in exploring ideas and learning from peer discussions. Kyle Brown leads the focus group on “Cloud Computing Patterns” and Jenny Quillien and Dave West will discuss in the second focus group “What do we understand by ‘levels of abstraction’ and ‘levels of scale’?”.

Bob Hanmer will show in a “Shepherding Workshop” on Thursday what the important aspects of this very constructive way of giving feedback are. On Friday evening there will be for a first time a special session. Joe Yoder, Richard P. Gabriel, and Ralph Johnson will kick off a panel discussion. The discussants will among others also include Kyle Brown, Ward Cunningham, Bob Hanmer, and Eugene Wallingford. Main topic of this discussion is to reflect on historical events affecting the software community and how those events will influence the course of software over the next 20 years. There will also be 'Birds of a Feather' (BoF) sessions that let you informally organize discussions about topics you are interested in, as well as joint dinner opportunities. Friday night is reserved for a musical evening, be surprised by Brazilian rhythms and singing.

And last but not least, we have the Games, a well-established and very important activity at PLoP. We are very glad to have George Platts back as game master. He will help us in a very creative way to relax and to help us to break the ice, exercise our body and mind, collaborate better, and reinforce a community of trust. Some of the games have become ‘traditions', while others will be a surprise (you always can expect that with George). After the conference, the authors are strongly encouraged to further evolve their papers in order to accommodate suggestions for improvement gathered during the discussions at the conference. A final version of evolved papers will be published by Hillside and hosted in the ACM Digital Library as PLoP 2013 Proceedings.

We would like to thank all authors, shepherds, reviewers, and Program Committee members for their time and collaboration with PLoP 2013. Thank you!

All of these words just to say that we wish you an amazing and productive time during PLoP!

Christian Köppe, PLoP 2013 Chair

PLoP 2013 Conference Description

Pattern Languages of Programs (PLoP) conference is a place for pattern authors to have their pattern languages reviewed by fellow authors. The purpose of PLoP is to promote the development of pattern languages, primarily about aspects of software: design and programming, testing, software architecture, user interface design, domain modeling, education, human relations, and software processes. Patterns and pattern languages for domains outside software are also welcome.

PLoP 2013 was held in Allerton Park, Monticello, Illinois from October 23-26, 2013.

We invited contributions from practitioners and researchers on:

• Patterns and pattern languages

• Critiques of patterns and pattern languages

• Research on patterns and pattern languages

• Case studies of the use of patterns and pattern languages

PLoP is different from other conferences. It is run in the "writers' workshop" style, as described in Richard Gabriel's book. Before the conference, authors interact with a "shepherd" who helps them improve their paper to make it as ready for PLoP as possible. A program committee reviews the papers for final acceptance after they have gone through the shepherding process. The writers workshops provide more feedback, and so authors revise their paper again after PLoP. The papers here are the version produced by authors after PLoP, not the ones reviewed at PLoP.

The table of contents is organized by the workshop groups and the chairs as they were presented at PLoP.
 

Table of Contents

Committees

The PLoP Conference would not be a success without the volunteer help of the shepherds and program committee members. The shepherds devote hours of their time to helping authors improve their papers pre-conference. The program committee members help organize the conference, handle requests, and communicate with attendees.