The pattern to rescue other patterns: The Golden Hammer

Patterns look like they can solve all of your real-life problem. To me, this is awfully wrong and can do more harm than good. Yes, patterns allow for organizing your knowledge and also for developers to find commond ground easier and they do awesome job there. But they are nothing more than a mnemonic constructs.

I sometimes hear sentences like

- We use pattern X here, because it's the right thing to do in this kind of project.

Not because the solution has the appropriate structure, and pattern X somehow emerges from it, but because such and such problems require such and such patterns. What a heck ? I thought problems require solutions, not patterns. To me, such talk is a bad sympthom - it means that people can't see forest for the trees. Or, which is also possible, that I can't understand what they are saying, but let's forget about this insane assumption at once :)

Now, for pattern lovers - the pattern to the rescue - The Golden Hammer. It says that if you are good at hammer work, all your problems appear to you as nails. Likewise, if you are good at patterns, you find the patterns you already know everywhere. The key point here is that you do not attempt to apply thought and find other kind of patterns, but blindly say - hey, this obviously asks for a bridge, and this is undoubtedly a mediator here.

It appears that most beautiful and influential things appear with reflection - a tendency to analyze oneself. The Golden Hammer is most reflectional as it implies you actually think about the process of applying patterns (including itself). And if you are more conscious in applying patterns - you benefit more, don't you think ?