AW: slide: useful function?

[John Hughes]

On Tue, 3 Dec 2002, Andrew J Bromage wrote:

> On Mon, Dec 02, 2002 at 10:27:21AM +0100, John Hughes wrote:
>
> > There are patterns of that sort in our programs, which we would probably
> > rather call design techniques, which aren't so easily captured by a
> > higher-order function definition.
>
> As a matter of interest, _why_ would we rather call them "design
> techniques" than "design patterns"?  Is it just an aversion to
> buzzwords, or are they fundamentally different?
>

No particular reason, maybe, except that the buzzword isn't established in
our community. And no wonder, since we have no catalogue of Haskell
"design patterns" -- we're not even completely sure what they are! If
there were such a catalogue, and it became popular among Haskell users,
and it called the entries design patterns, then that would establish the
term.

One difference which I see between a "technique" and a "pattern" is that
there is a uniform and somewhat formal way of describing patterns: thought
has been put into what you should document when you describe a pattern.
Maybe we should stick to vaguer terms such as "technique" until we've put
in the corresponding thought!

John