Virginia Tech Dept. of Computer Science Planned submission for PLoP '98.
Patterns are a literary form for capturing design knowledge.
A pattern guides a decision or class of decisions that must be made, by describing a problem and its solution in context. A group of patterns is sometimes organized into a pattern language, which provides guidance through a series of decisions. These patterns apply fairly early in the design, after task analysis and object-oriented analysis have identified key tasks, objects, and relationships. In One Task Per Window , he provides guidance on how to associate windows with tasks. The patterns below are intended to weave into that same design space, and assume Beck's patterns as a given.