The Hillside Group is a nonprofit corporation dedicated to improving human communication about computers by encouraging people to codify common programming and design practice. We sponsor conferences (like PLoP, EuroPLoP, Using Patterns, ChiliPLoP, Mensore PLoP, KoalaPLoP, Viking PLoP, ScrumPLoP and SugarLoafPLoP) and also host the patterns home page.

The world of software development is a mixture of concerns ranging from correctness and execution efficiency to the beauty and elegance of the architecture, design, and internal structure of systems to the overall aesthetics, usability, and humanity of systems and all the way to the organization of development and the manner of software production. This spectrum can be broken down into those parts that are necessary for the correct and efficient functioning and creation of systems on one hand and what makes those systems and organizations for making them "good," aesthetically pleasing, and humane on the other. That is, at one extreme are concerns about the minimal requirements to get the job done and at the other are concerns about the qualities of the software and the humanity of the process that produced it.