Re: advantages of forth over other languages

Bruce McFarling wrote:
> Excepting, I presume, real domain experts from the problem domains
> where design patterns originated, before being adopted into computer
> programming.

My grandmother enjoyed making clothing, quilts, and the like.  She would 
do this for fun as well as gifts, and she would often start with a 
pattern.  For those that don't know, you can get patterns for common 
things-- ****rts, pants, dresses, coats, etc.  These patterns effectively 
capture a lot of past experience in making clothes-- how to attach a 
lapel, the pro****tions to match different sizes of people, places to 
leave things loose, where to reinforce for strength, etc.

But these were patterns, not kits.  She added her own special touches. 
She sometimes combined patterns together, picking and choosing the parts 
she liked from both.  And sometimes, she would completely ignore the 
pattern because she wanted to do something different or experimental.

When she was done, you could look at the patterns she used and see them 
in the completed garment.  These patterns had names, and she would say 
"I took an sleeve from X and used a Y base for the ****rt."

....

The computer science notion of design patterns largely evolved from the 
architectural notion of pattern languages.  But the larger concept has 
existed in many forms prior to that.  Computer science came fairly late 
to the party.  Other areas that had their own pattern languages were 
typesetters, stage directors, choreographers, and chefs.

My first exposure to design patterns happened when I was debugging some 
code with a fellow engineer.  I was in the middle of explaining how some 
core parts of my system worked, and he interrupted me and said, "oh, 
you're using an Observer pattern.

I didn't know what he was talking about.  So we talked about it, and I 
was intrigued by the notion of being able to describe high level design 
concepts in an abstract way.

So I went out and bought the classic "Gang of Four" Design Patterns book 
and started to go through the 23 patterns the book describes.  In it, I 
found familiar ideas that I either have been implementing or that I have 
seen in other's code.  But now, I had a name for them, and I had a 
language for communicating my designs to others.  And by studying design 
patterns I was unfamiliar with, I started to see ways to apply those 
ideas to simplify or improve my systems.

If my grandmother was still alive, it would be great to describe design 
patterns to her and get her reaction.  Knowing her, she would probably 
say, "well, duh, how else would programmers talk about what they do-- 
everyone needs a common language to describe their work."  She would 
then make me the best cheese-salad sandwiches in the world.