This is a small book about how to write software patterns. The software development community has learned from Christopher Alexander's A Pattern Language that Patterns are a good way to capture the experience of expertise in a way that can be transferred to those who need that knowledge.
Software Patterns now covers patterns of software construction, but also organizational structure, Agile Software Development methods and other things. Most expertise can be captured in the form of patterns.
Patterns show how an expert approaches and solves problems found in their context. There is an active international community writing patterns of all kinds. This book gives advice on how to approach the writing and improvement of such patterns.
This book is about writing patterns, but does not contain patterns, other than a number of examples to show the process and the various forms.
The author has written over one hundred patterns and collaborated on many others. He has two pattern books in print.
Joseph Bergin has been teaching at Manchester since 1978, and is an internationally recognised expert on the history of early modern France, especially the seventeenth century. He has written six major books, one of which was awarded the Prix Richelieu in 1995, and edited a number of others. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1996 and has frequently been a visiting professor to French universities.