The Hillside Group is an educational

nonprofit organization A nonprofit organization (NPO), also known as a nonbusiness entity, nonprofit institution, not-for-profit organization, or simply a nonprofit, is a non-governmental (private) legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public, or so ...

founded in August 1993 to help

software developers A programmer, computer programmer or coder is an author of computer source code someone with skill in computer programming. The professional titles Software development, ''software developer'' and Software engineering, ''software engineer' ...

analyze and document common development and design problems as

software design pattern In software engineering, a software design pattern or design pattern is a general, reusable solution to a commonly occurring problem in many contexts in software design. A design pattern is not a rigid structure to be transplanted directly into s ...

s. The Hillside Group supports the patterns community through sponsorship of the

Pattern Languages of Programs Pattern Languages of Programs is a group of annual conferences sponsored by The Hillside Group. The purpose of these conferences is to develop and refine the art of software design patterns. Most of the effort focuses on developing a textual pr ...

conferences.

History

In August 1993,

Kent Beck Kent Beck (born 1961) is an American software engineer and the creator of extreme programming, a software development methodology that eschews rigid formal specification for a collaborative and iterative design process. Beck was one of the 17 o ...

and

Grady Booch Grady Booch (born February 27, 1955) is an American software engineer, best known for developing the Unified Modeling Language (UML) with Ivar Jacobson and James Rumbaugh. He is recognized internationally for his innovative work in software archit ...

sponsored a mountain retreat in Colorado where a group converged on foundations for software patterns.

Ward Cunningham Howard G. Cunningham (born May 26, 1949) is an American computer programmer who developed the first wiki Excerpt from 2014 book '' The Innovators''. and was a co-author of the '' Manifesto for Agile Software Development''. Called a pioneer, and ...

, Ralph Johnson, Ken Auer, Hal Hildebrand, Grady Booch, Kent Beck, and

Jim Coplien James O. Coplien, also known as Cope, is a writer, lecturer, and researcher in the field of computer science. He held the 2003–4 Vloeberghs Leerstoel (Vloeberghs Chair) at Vrije Universiteit Brussel and has been a visiting professor at Univers ...

examined architect

Christopher Alexander Christopher Wolfgang John Alexander (4 October 1936 – 17 March 2022) was an Austrian-born British-American architect and Design theory, design theorist. He was an Professors in the United States#Professor emeritus and emerita, emeritus profes ...

's work in

pattern language A pattern language is an organized and coherent set of ''patterns'', each of which describes a problem and the core of a solution that can be used in many ways within a specific field of expertise. The term was coined by architect Christopher Ale ...

and their own experiences as software developers to combine the concepts of objects and patterns and apply them to writing computer programs. The group agreed to build on

Erich Gamma Erich Gamma is a Swiss computer scientist and one of the four co-authors (referred to as "Gang of Four") of the software engineering textbook, '' Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software''. Gamma, along with Kent Beck, co-w ...

's study of object-oriented patterns, but to use patterns in a generative way in the sense that Alexander uses patterns for

urban planning Urban planning (also called city planning in some contexts) is the process of developing and designing land use and the built environment, including air, water, and the infrastructure passing into and out of urban areas, such as transportatio ...

and architecture. They used the word ''generative'' to mean creational, to distinguish them from Gamma's patterns' that captured observations. The group was meeting on the side of a hill, which led them to name themselves the Hillside Group. Since then, the Hillside Group has been incorporated as an educational non-profit organization. It sponsors and helps run

(PLoP) conferences such a
PLoPEuroPlopChiliPlopGuruPLoPAsian PLoPScrum PLoPViking PLoP
an
Sugarloaf PLoP
The Hillside Group has also worked on the Pattern Languages of Program Design series of books.

Activities

The Hillside Group sponsors the Pattern Languages of Programs conferences in various countries, including the U.S., Brazil, Norway, Germany, Australia, and Japan. The Hillside Group assisted in publishing the Pattern Languages of Program Design book series until 2006. Since 2006, The Hillside Group has published patterns and conference proceedings through the

Association for Computing Machinery The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is a US-based international learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 and is the world's largest scientific and educational computing society. The ACM is a non-profit professional membe ...

(ACM) Digital Library.

Patterns Library

The Hillside Patterns Library contains a comprehensive archive of patterns developed by the community, either directly or indirectly through the PLoP conferences.

Conferences

The Hillside Group sponsors the conferences listed. The conferences focus on writing patterns, workshops, and invited talks related to pattern development. Most of the conferences are held annually and encourage attendees to submit papers pre-conference for inclusion in the writer's workshops. The papers undergo a shepherding process, where they are analyzed and evolved before conference attendance. * PLoP:

* ChiliPLoP: Southwestern Conference on Pattern Languages of Program

* EuroPLoP: European Conference on Pattern Languages of Program

* AsianPLoP: Japanese Conference on Pattern Languages of Program

* SugarLoafPLoP: Latin American Conference on Pattern Languages of Programmin

* VikingPLoP: Nordic Conference on Pattern Languages of Program

* ScrumPLoP: Conference on Pattern Languages of Scru

* EduPLoP: Educational Patterns Writing Worksho

The Hillside Group Board

The President of The Hillside Group for 2010–2014 is Joseph Yoder of The Refactory, Inc. The Hillside Group is led by a Board consisting of the President, Vice-President, Chief Operating Officer, Treasurer, two Directors, Secretary, two Editors in Chief and four Members.

Current board

References

External links

The Hillside Group official website

The Hillside Group European website

List of PLoP Conferences

LNCS Transactions on Pattern Languages of Programming

ACM Digital Library
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hillside Group Professional associations based in the United States Computer science organizations Information technology organizations Organizations established in 1993 Software design patterns