#2782

The Great Debate: Patterns vs. Tooling

Jason Hogg wrote a post about our discussion on patterns vs. tooling at the p&p Summit. This was a fun panel to be on, largely because of the great input we got from the audience.

Wojtek and I were presenting the patterns in tools standpoint, tooling that uses patterns and includes documentation on them. Whereas Jason and Dragos proposed evangelizing patterns through books and other media, a much improved version of PatternShare for example.

For me the biggest take home was that delivering pattern guidance purely through tools increases the barrier to entry significantly. You have to download the tool and install it just to look at the pattern guidance. I have to admit that this isn’t a great story. It seems like there’s a middle ground, rather than an either/or choice to be made here.

If you were at the p&p Summit and didn’t get a chance to have your say, or you weren’t there and want to add something then leave a comment here!