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Richard P. Gabriel, Patterns of Software: Tales from the Software Community (New York: Oxford UP, 1998), 256pp., $14.95 (paper).
In Patterns of Software: Tales from the Software Community, Richard Gabriel sets himself a large, sweeping, and daunting task to chronicle aspects of software development in the United States over the past several years. In a series of seventeen relatively self-contained essays, some previously published in the Journal of Object-Oriented Programming, Gabriel attempts to cover a wide range of subjects: cutting-edge (or bleeding-edge, in the argot of Silicon Valley) software development techniques, the design patterns from which this slim volume takes its name, the technical nuances of programming language design, and the ups and downs (mostly the downs) of founding and directing a Silicon Valley start-up company. The inclusion of more purely autobiographical essays and his own humanist tendencies reassure readers that even the technological avant garde (Gabriel holds a Ph.D. in computer science from Stanford University and was one of the principal architects of the programming language known as CLOS, the Common Lisp Object System) prefer human contact to...