Welcome to Brad Appleton's Documents

Available Documents

• Patterns in a Nutshell
• Patterns and Software: Essential Concepts and Terminology
• Streamed Lines: Branching Patterns for Parallel Software Development
• Patterns for Conducting Process Improvement
• On the Nature of "The Nature of Order"
• Introducing Demeter and its Laws
• A Software Design Specification Template
• ClearView: Associating Attributes and Notes with a View
• AVL trees: a Tutorial and C++ Implementation
• Pizza Inversion - a Pattern for Efficient Resource Consumption
• Trim Your Post - a "pattern" of Netiquette
• Stretching and Flexibility: Everything you never wanted to know

Document Summaries

• Patterns in a Nutshell

  (8.7KB, 8-10 pages)
  A set of 11 slides giving a very brief introduction to the notion of patterns.

  Also available in PDF format (31.5KB, 12 pages).

• Patterns and Software: Essential Concepts and Terminology

  (95KB, 20-25 pages)
  An introduction to the history, origins, and essential concepts and terminology of software patterns (including numerous pointers to other WWW sources of information on the subject). An earlier revision of this paper appeared in the May 1997 Object Magazine Online (Vol. 3, No. 5).

  Also available in PDF format (120KB, 16 pages).

• Streamed Lines: Branching Patterns for Parallel Software Development

  (432KB, split up into 10 HTML files)
  A set of approximately 50 patterns and pattern variants (and a dozen traps/pitfalls) regarding the use of branching in softfware version control tools to facilitate parallel development. An earlier revision of this paper appears in the Proceedings of the 5th Annual Conference on Pattern Languages of Program Design (PLoP'98).

• Patterns for Conducting Process Improvement

  (79KB, 18-21 pages)
  A set of ten patterns used for conducting software process improvement initiatives. An earlier revision of this paper appears in the Proceedings of the 4th Annual Conference on Pattern Languages of Program Design (PLoP'97).

  Also available in PDF format (121KB, 19 pages).

  I presented these patterns to the Chicago Software Process Improvement Network (C-SPIN). The presentation slides are available here in PDF format (72KB, 26 pages).

• On the Nature of "The Nature of Order"

  (29KB, 8-10 pages)
  These are some notes I took at a presentation given by Jim Coplien to the Chicago Patterns Group on the subject of Christopher Alexander's upcoming work entitled "The Nature of Order."

• Introducing Demeter and its Laws

  (14KB, 3-6 pages)
  A basic introduction (with pointer to further information) to the Law of Demeter (LoD), the Demeter method, and the Demeter project. This is such a commonly recurring FAQ on O-O newsgroups and mailing lists that I gradually evolved my "canned response" into a more structured exposition.

• A Software Design Specification Template

  (25KB, 8-10 pages)
  A document template for software architecture and design descriptions.

• ClearView: Associating Attributes and Notes with a View

  (43KB, 20-25 pages)
  A user presentation I gave at the September 1996 ClearCase International User's Group Conference (CCIUG'96).

• AVL trees: a Tutorial and C++ Implementation

  (48.5KB 15-20 pages)
  A very comprehensive explanation of AVL trees and their implementation.

• Pizza Inversion - a Pattern for Efficient Resource Consumption

  (14KB, 4-6 pages)
  A humorous but nonetheless effective design pattern for the efficient consumption of pizza :-).

  Also available in MS-Word'97 format (zipped) (18KB, 6 pages).

• Trim Your Post - a "pattern" of Netiquette

  (11KB, 4-6 pages)
  A pattern for considerate electronic correspondence for Usenet and electronic mail. The pattern itself is dead serious, but the example given is quite humorous.

• Stretching and Flexibility: Everything you never wanted to know

  (204KB split across 10 files, 55-60 pages)
  The Stretching and Flexibility FAQ for Usenet.