Are Software Patterns Simply a Handy Way to Package Design Heuristics?

Billy Vaughn Koen, in Discussion of the Method: Conducting the Engineer’s Approach to Problem Solving, defines a heuristic as anything that provides a plausible direction in the solution of a problem, but in the final analysis is unjustified, incapable of justification, and potentially fallible. Software patterns might be considered nicely packaged heuristics in that they provide a context for the problem, and offer plausible solutions along with forces that the designer needs to consider when implementing a solution. Like any heuristic, software patterns come with no guarantees that they will solve the current problem at hand. A dedicated group of authors in the patterns community continues to write patterns, collections of patterns, and more ambitiously weave patterns into pattern languages that attempt to cover paths to solutions in a particular problem space. Are we deluding ourselves about the utility of these efforts? Or is there something important about both the form and use of patterns in the larger context of design heuristics that we need to understand?This essay was presented at the 24th Conference on Pattern Languages of Programs (PLoP 2017) held October 23-25, Vancouver, BC, Canada. Revisions were made based on PLoP writers workshop feedback