Design Pattern Density Defined

Riehle D (2009)


Publication Type: Conference contribution, Original article

Publication year: 2009

Publisher: ACM Press

Edited Volumes: Proceedings of the Conference on Object-Oriented Programming Systems, Languages, and Applications, OOPSLA

City/Town: USA

Pages Range: 469-480

Conference Proceedings Title: Proceedings of the 2009 Conference on Object-Oriented Programming Systems, Languages, and Applications

Event location: Orlando, FL, USA

DOI: 10.1145/1640089.1640125

Abstract

Design pattern density is a metric that measures how much of an object-oriented design can be understood and represented as instances of design patterns. Expert developers have long believed that a high design pattern density implies a high maturity of the design under inspection. This paper presents a quantifiable and observable definition of this metric. The metric is illustrated and qualitatively validated using four real-world case studies. We present several hypotheses of the metric's meaning and their implications, including the one about design maturity. We propose that the design pattern density of a maturing framework has a fixed point and we show that if software design patterns make learning frameworks easier, a framework's design pattern density is a measure of how much easier it will become. Copyright © 2009 ACM.

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How to cite

APA:

Riehle, D. (2009). Design Pattern Density Defined. In Proceedings of the 2009 Conference on Object-Oriented Programming Systems, Languages, and Applications (pp. 469-480). Orlando, FL, USA: USA: ACM Press.

MLA:

Riehle, Dirk. "Design Pattern Density Defined." Proceedings of the OOPSLA 2009, Orlando, FL, USA USA: ACM Press, 2009. 469-480.

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