Welcome to the patterns home page. It is a source for information about all aspects of software patterns and pattern languages. If you are new to patterns, James Coplien and Richard Gabriel have created a succinct pattern definition.

Patterns and Pattern Languages are ways to describe best practices, good designs, and capture experience in a way that it is possible for others to reuse this experience. The Hillside Group takes pleasure in sponsoring many different PLoP conferences that are provided for the betterment of the pattern community.

Fundamental to any science or engineering discipline is a common vocabulary for expressing its concepts, and a language for relating them together. The goal of patterns within the software community is to create a body of literature to help software developers resolve recurring problems encountered throughout all of software development. Patterns help create a shared language for communicating insight and experience about these problems and their solutions. Formally codifying these solutions and their relationships lets us successfully capture the body of knowledge which defines our understanding of good architectures that meet the needs of their users. Forming a common pattern language for conveying the structures and mechanisms of our architectures allows us to intelligibly reason about them. The primary focus is not so much on technology as it is on creating a culture to document and support sound engineering architecture and design.

- Brad Appleton