Patterns of engineering

Both individuals and disciplines, as a whole, learn from experience. Patterns are a way to capture that experience which is often lost in traditional design literature. Patterns work with other patterns under human guidance to support a process for building systems that employ local adaptation and piecemeal growth. The pattern language design technique has roots in architecture and has close ties to broad engineering practices; many engineering artifacts (such as the article´s suspension bridge and the push-pull amplifier examples) are typical patterns. Patterns are being widely used in object-oriented software development and have pushed into other areas of software engineering. However, they are a natural fit for a broad spectrum of current engineering design practices. Design can be defined as the process that takes one from a problem to a workable solution. Whether your design techniques help you create the reinforcements in a large dam, improve the speed or density of a VLSI circuit, or create the layout of a new neighborhood, they all have to do with creating structures that solve problems. Many of the solutions to the design problems set to students can be taught as engineering rules. Such rules are often the foundation for teaching an engineering discipline.