The classic book about Design Patterns in Object-Oriented Programming was written by Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson and John Vlissides; also known as "the gang of four".

The whole idea about design patterns was inspired by the work of the architect Cristopher Alexander, who proposed the idea of using a pattern language to architect buildings and cities.

The story goes that Alexander was invited as a speaker at some OO-conference as a tribute to the influence his ideas have had on the OO-community. Alexander held his speech, expressing his gratitude that the designers and programmers in this, for him unknown, engineering-field, could use his ideas.

Ironically, he had to admit that he could not understand what the conference was all about. The Design Patterns presented at the conference simply didn't make sense to him - The inventor of the Design Patterns-idea.

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