Importance of Design Patterns and Frameworks for Software Development

One of the core topics in my Design and Implementation of Software course at Reykjavik University is design patterns.

Design patterns are among the most powerful methods for building large software system. Patterns provide well-know solutions to reoccurring problems that developers are facing. There are several benefits of using patterns if applied correctly. Although design patterns are only over decade old, the science of patterns is becoming established, allowing for consistent communication. By using well-known patterns reusable components can be built in frameworks. Providing frameworks for reusability and separation of concerns is key to software development today.

This article appeared in Icelandic magazine Tölvumál.

Importance of Design Patterns and Frameworks for Software Development

EL/WLA Sports Betting Seminar June 2006

In June 2006, I spoke at the EL/WLA conference in Munich, Germany. US and European state-owned Lotteries are perfect example of companies that are facing disruption due to the Internet and new technologies.

In the lecture I talk about how interactivity has increased since the early web. I made a reference to a talk I gave eleven years earlier, in 1995, at a marketing conference in Myvatn, Iceland (see the picture in the slides) about the Internet and opportunities of a new media. I used the location, Myvatn, Iceland, to illustrate the change to come. You can be in the middle of nowhere and still buy a lottery ticket. I had a demo where I use my modem to dial onto the net and accessed http://www.1×2.is and bought a ticket. This was the first public demostattion of the world’s first Internet betting web site. History was being made. But to my surprise participants were not very excited. When they realized that you can be anywhere in the world, they simply wanted to know who is responsible for this so they can have the Internet closed.

Eleven years later, in Munich, I’m still talking about the promise of the Internet. The lecture was about new focus needed in sports betting technology.

Technology Case Study: WAP

This is an article that I wrote for my New Technology class some years ago. The idea was to explore technologies that go up the Hype Curve and then fail. It’s a nice study of how technology can promise so much and deliver so little.

WAP is a technology that took the world by a storm around 2000. It was destined to be a revolution in the way people used their mobile phones. The Internet in you hands! However, despite the hype and glory, the technology did not live up to expectation and failed. At the same time another comparable technology emerged in Japan and, unlike WAP, became a success.

Today, nobody talks about WAP. Nevertheless, WAP makes a nice case study of how technology can fail in the market place. Some might argue that WAP did not fail and that it still exists today and is widely used. It has huge impact, and has become transparent as most technologies eventually will be. This document is a case study on WAP.

Technology Case Study: WAP