And patterns published elsewhere earn their authors a financial reward from the company. Rising says investments in libraries of reusable software components often fail to pay off because components developed for one application don't quite fit the needs of the next one, so they aren't used by developers. But patterns, which are at a higher level of abstraction, often do fit the needs of multiple applications perfectly. The easiest way to get a group to use a new pattern is to have everybody read it and then to get together to talk about how to use it. After you've tried it out a few times and it works, it becomes part of the group's culture.
Patterns are just a small part of a complete approach to software.
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