Design Patterns

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1. kooiOct 2026
   Design Patterns by Gamma et al.

   Recently helped me solve a non-obvious code-stink design issue.

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2. verify-aiJul 2026
   Design Patterns by Gang of Four is one of my favorite books. It was well structured and easy to read and reference. I remember when copied each pattern manually to learn them and reference into a pattern repo in Java.

   A couple weekends ago I felt inspired and I've build a research ingestion pipeline that uses AI to filter Arxiv for better quality research and filtered the best ideas that repeat into a sort of executive summary or ethos document. This document now guides all software projects I begin.

   I would like to share and I hope you find it useful too!

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3. noveltyaccountDec 2025
   In my senior year of college two decades ago, I needed one or two credit hours to finish up, and I signed up for a once per week software patents (as in, intellectual property, I thought) course. It turned out to be a patterns course taught by none other than Ralph Johnson and the text was his famous Gang of Four Design Patterns book. Happy accident, it turned out to be among the most professionally useful courses I ever took.

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Johnson_(computer_scient...

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4. andyjohnson0Sep 2025
   Been doing this software thing for 35 years so I guess that makes me an old timer.

   Technical books, especially for practitioners, that stay relevant over a long period of time are rather rare. I wish I could say that I've had time to study TAoCP or SICP, but I haven't.

   Some of what I did find useful back in the day were: Advanced Programming in the Unix Environment by Stevens, Stan Lippman's C++ book, Code Complete by Steve McConnell, the GoF Design Patterns book, Working Effectively With Legacy Code by Michael Feathers, and Introduction to Artificial Intelligence by Charniak and McDermott.

   Whether, and to what extent, any of them are useful now is hard to say. Depends what you want to learn and what you're doing. The Charniak book, for example, is about classic "good old fashioned" AI, not the currently dominant connectionist approach. But it's LISP, and LISP is always relevant.

   I'd also add The Systems Bible by John Gall as a book that influenced me. Its not a technology book though.

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5. jjiceSep 2025
   Some of my favorites that have stayed at least pretty relevant. Disclosure: not an old timer.

   - UNIX and Linux System Administration Handbook. Get the most recently volume. It's a tomb (~1200 for the most recent).

   - If you do any SQL, SQY Performance Explained is an 80/20 read for DB indexes, query optimization, and troubleshooting

   - A Philosophy of Software Design (more recent). Just a great book on good design considerations to keep in mind.

   - Mastering Regular Expressions. The first half of the book will make you confident. The second half will show you how they're implemented. Regular expressions aren't something to be afraid of!

   - Designing Data Intensive Applications (more recent). Great book about data infra design decisions. Maybe not the scope you're looking for though.

   - Design Patterns (Gang of Four). Absolute classic. Hard to read all the way through though, more of a reference read. You'll recognize a lot of the patterns. You'll find some great to see a formal definition of, and you'll see some you never want to use.

   - Clean Architecture - Uncle Bob's best book IMO. I really don't like Clean Code, but this book talks a lot about interfaces and the right level of separation in your systems.

   - K&R, as you mentioned, is of course a classic

   - The AWK Programming Language is a nice quick read with similar quality and structure to K&R.

   - Beej's Guide to Network Programming. The best overview of network programming, including the C API. Plus this book is genuinely funny. Beej has a ton of great stuff, all on their website for free, or in print.

   - The Rust Programming Language is very well written too. Also online for free or in print.

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6. MrMcCallApr 2025
   > C lacks mechanisms to do this apart from using its incredibly brittle macro facility.

   We programmers are the ultimate abstraction mechanism, and refining our techniques in pattern design and implementation in a codebase is our highest form of art. The list of patterns in the Gang-of-Four's "Design Patterns" are not as interesting as its first 50 pages, which are seminal.

   From the organization of files in a project, to organization of projects, to class structure and use, to function design, to debug output, to variable naming as per scope, to commandline argument specification, to parsing, it's nothing but patterns upon patterns.

   You're either doing patterns or you're doing one-offs, and one-offs are more brittle than C macros, are hard to comprehend later, and when you fix a bug in one, you've only fixed one bug, not an entire class of bugs.

   Abstraction is the essense of programming, and abstraction is just pattern design and implementation in a codebase, the design of a functional block and how it's consumed over time.

   The layering of abstractions is the most fundamental perspective on a codebase. They not only handle scale, they make or break correctness, ease of malleability, bug triage, performance, and comprehendability -- I'm sure I could find more.

   The design of the layering of abstractions is the everything of a codebase.

   The success of C's ability to let programmers create layers of abstractions is why C is the foundational language of the OS I'm using, as well as the browser I'm typing this message in. I'm guessing you are, too, and, while I could be wrong, it's not likely. And not a segfault in sight. The scale of Unix is unmatched.

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