Comments for micro-workflow.com http://micro-workflow.com Mon, 12 May 2008 07:15:17 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.3.2 Comment on JAOO 2005 Panel on the Future of Patterns by Dragos Manolescu http://micro-workflow.com/2005/09/21/jaoo-2005-panel-on-the-future-of-patterns/#comment-2 Dragos Manolescu Sun, 30 Dec 2007 09:51:35 +0000 http://micro-workflow.com/2005/09/21/jaoo-2005-panel-on-the-future-of-patterns/#comment-2 One of the folks attending the JAOO patterns panel asked about the relationship between pattterns and innovation. Both Ralph Johnson and myself answered it. I started by pointing out that my answer <!--break-->will likely show my ignorance to the area that I'm about to talk about. Then I ventured into the land of brain science and pointed out the theory about the brain functions (which earned Roger Sperry a Nobel prize in the 1980s). According to this theory innovation and other creative activities such as <a href="http://painting.about.com/library/blpaint/blrightbraintable.htm" rel="nofollow">painting</a> takes place in the right brain, while generalization and structuring in the left brain. Since patterns deal with the latter my guess is that they're more of a left brain activity rather than a right brain activity. Therefore, while patterns don't represent innovation they may act as a catalyst, injecting order into creativity and helping people stand back and generalize. On a related subject, Tim O'Reilly gave a talk on Design Patterns for Innovation at this year's EclipseCon. I didn't attend EclipseCon but managed to have a look at his slides. Tim used the Alexandrian pattern form to discuss several patterns that have fueled innovation. Many of the successful Web sites who turned 10 this year (e-Bay, Amazon, Google, Yahoo!) employ these patterns. You can find links to Tim's talk as well as to a commentary in my <a href="http://micro-workflow.com/2005/09/07/patternprojects/" rel="nofollow">Patterns Projects page</a>. One of the folks attending the JAOO patterns panel asked about the relationship between pattterns and innovation. Both Ralph Johnson and myself answered it. I started by pointing out that my answer will likely show my ignorance to the area that I’m about to talk about. Then I ventured into the land of brain science and pointed out the theory about the brain functions (which earned Roger Sperry a Nobel prize in the 1980s). According to this theory innovation and other creative activities such as painting takes place in the right brain, while generalization and structuring in the left brain. Since patterns deal with the latter my guess is that they’re more of a left brain activity rather than a right brain activity. Therefore, while patterns don’t represent innovation they may act as a catalyst, injecting order into creativity and helping people stand back and generalize.

On a related subject, Tim O’Reilly gave a talk on Design Patterns for Innovation at this year’s EclipseCon. I didn’t attend EclipseCon but managed to have a look at his slides. Tim used the Alexandrian pattern form to discuss several patterns that have fueled innovation. Many of the successful Web sites who turned 10 this year (e-Bay, Amazon, Google, Yahoo!) employ these patterns. You can find links to Tim’s talk as well as to a commentary in my Patterns Projects page.

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