EuroPLoP Project Diary

How can we contribute to a project that we would like to emulate?

I have received the current draft of the Moldable Patterns paper from Oscar Nierstrasz. They would like to take it to the 29th European Conference on Pattern Languages of Programs (EuroPLoP '24). Oscar has asked me to review the draft and he would agree if we could look at it together and give feedback.

Ward skimmed the paper pdf and read the abstract, introduction, references, and conclusion more closely (everything except the patterns).

The first highlight was the solution part of Moldable Collection Wrapper.

Traits appear to be the preferred solution.

answers with a collection of Slugs (an Array)

Compare with the code in the paper:

with

Ward notes that the term "live" is used 20 times in the paper, but he doesn't think a further definition is necessary.

Live Coding is most prominent as a performing arts form and a creativity technique centered upon the writing of source code and the use of interactive programming in an improvised way. wikipedia

Message from Oscar Nierstrasz via discord: "For the wiki pages you might want to refer to the expanded patterns list ... page "

[3] Stéphane Ducasse, Oscar Nierstrasz, Nathanael Schärli, Roel Wuyts, and Andrew P. Black. 2006. Traits: A mechanism for fine-grained reuse. TOPLAS: ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems 28, 2 (March 2006), 331–388. doi

Ward thinks "the paper, the pdf, has some need to stand alone. Maybe this is not true anymore. But most of what I know of gt comes from the calls we had with Tudor. I was much impressed with how he said they would send gt quotes back and forth over slack with little or no accompanying explanation. They also say "Explanation" a lot. The abstract starts and ends with this word."

In one case gt explains, in the other case the patterns explain. Tutor's slack example shows the former, gt quotes as self explanatory.

⇒ Narrative Picture

Ward: Alexander distinguished between patterns and "Pattern Language" which was more generative in the Chomsky sense.

Ward: Lots of folks like to compose patterns with a template. On wiki I suggested two paragraphs separated by the word "Therefore" was sufficient so long as the first paragraph described a recurring problem with roots in human nature, and the second paragraph described something specific you could make or do that "resolves" the forces present in the first paragraph. I might have referred to this as Patlets once or twice.

⇐ Moldable Development Patterns

I think the paper is missing a reference to the Moldable Development problem statement. page

Ward's reply: Yes. This is excellent. The Human Nature that I would like to see in problem statements could easily explore short-term vs long-term decisions. For example, molding is for the short term, but the information it exposes could be either, maybe even both, short for management, long for full time employees.

Since we are looking for assumptions that have not been addressed – cf. the Technique for Reading the Abstract mentioned in Ward's mail and note/Zettel ~/mpd/2 –, the question arises for me as to what concept of System the authors of the paper are using. I doubt that all readers have the same concept of e.g. software system and would see the concept of system more abstractly with regard to the topic of decision making. I think the addressees for these patterns are not only people but also organizations and thus social systems. Or do you consider the system concept used by the authors to be self-evident?

Ward's reply: No, I don't think it self-evident, though I know enough about GT that I could guess. I have been trying not to guess.

List of Problem Statements – Intention: I (Ward) would like to read carefully each pattern keeping in mind that my greatest ambition would be to apply the patterns in my own environment. The authors conclude that this is believed possible. I now turn to the problem statement of each pattern as the first test of fit with my environment.

Ward via DM (matrix): I've decoded my first five patterns and they make sense as a system

On Saturday, Ward completed his first run through two of the three sections.

This already looks promising. It looks better when it's color coded, and it may look better when it's divided into overarching concerns (aspects).

On Sunday, he worked on entering them into one of our viewers. The goal was to read and match each pattern in the PDF file.

Now done with all Patterns. Ward's graph now sprawls a bit which will be fixed with aspect selection. The center of the graph is Domain.question, not a particular Pattern. This seems an insight.

Here as bits:

Now in color:

Ward thinks it's no surprise that Domain:question should stand out.

Here with tools and modeling selected we see the emphasis turn to the Application itself.

With Tools and Process selected, we see the Quick-Start fits in to the tool philosophy. Try these yourself: page

Re: and it may look better when it's divided into overarching concerns (aspects).

Eric Evans writes at the end of a recent post ,

When the moldable developer gets an answer to an important question, then what? Do moldable tools help refactor the application code that is overdue for attention?

Oscar Nierstrasz via discord DM: That depends what decision you are trying to make. Refactoring may or may not be a part of that.

Ralf: I would now expect "Decision" to appear prominently in the MD patterns, wouldn't you? Edward mentioned "the idea of Decision-Making as a Thing" in the review. The Project Diary asks "How can you keep track of decisions, ...?" Should something like a Decision Object be added? as a subclass of Moldable Object?! So Refactoring could be part of a Decision-Making Strategy!

And this Decision Object seems to collaborate with a map (Wardley Map, the MD patterns map, …), doesn't it?

Oscar added some text about Decision-Making in the intro, as you and Edward suggested, but I don't think it's part of the Pattern Language in this incarnation. We are already close to the page limit, so we want to focus more on the explanation part (Know Where You Are).