Software Warlock

I was reading up on implementing the Singleton Design Pattern in various languages, and I found an interesting discussion about how the Python community prefers the Borg design pattern instead. The idea is rather than focussing on only allowing one instance of a class to be created, you just make the internal state of the objects the same (one mind, many bodies, get it?). I thought the name was awesome.

Microsoft, in my humble opinion, has always been more interested in new “technology” rather than the fundamental ideas that underpin the technology.  It makes sense.  Microsoft is a for-profit company.  You make money by selling the newest-latest-greatest, not by delving into the fundamental principals and problems that are common to many software project, regardless of if it is on Windows, the Mac, or *gasp* Linux.  This has changed a little with .NET.  Clearly Microsoft has gone out and recruited some of the best architecture/language/whatever people on the planet to help them build their runtime, languages and development environment.

Anyway, all this hoopla is leading up to a link to the Microsoft Patterns & Practices section of the MSDN website.  It’s for enterprise software (not necessarily desktop stuff), and I haven’t had much of a chance to read through everything yet, so I can’t speak to how good the patterns are, but I thought I’d post it here for anyone interested in going beyond “how do I do X in .NET” to thinking about the deeper issues.