At this month's TCPG meeting, I'll be leading a group discussion on an ongoing book effort by Joshua Kerievsky (think industriallogic.com).

(This will follow this month's OTUG speaker presentation on OO software architecture)

I have been consistently impressed by Joshua's work, both in helping others clarify their understanding of patterns, and most recently with his thoughts on "Refactoring to Patterns".

The reading that we'll be discussing is a "book in progress", available on the web at:

http://www.industriallogic.com/papers/rtp014.pdf

Be forewarned - This is currently a 111 page document (unfinished, in- progress) that is a marvelous compendium of grass roots development insight into the effective application of patterns (IMO). However, do not be daunted by the length. If you are familiar with the "Gang of Four" design patterns and/or Fowlers Refactoring book, you are already familiar with most of the design details that Joshua describes.

I invite you to read through some of this material (or all of it, for those of you that are feeling ambitious) and come to our TCPG meeting "loaded for bar" - ready for a lively discussion of as many of Joshua's thoughts as we can fit into the time we have! If there is interest, we can decide to continue/revisit this dicussion in future meetings, too.

Pay particular attention to Joshua's lead-in introductory sections. They give his definition and motivation for this "Refactoring to Patterns". We'll start our discussion there...

See y'all on the 16th... :)