Stuart Halloway has an article in his blog on Relevance LLC entitled Design Patterns are Code Smells.

Am I missing something or is this stating the downright obvious? A Design Pattern is a commonly used solution to a design problem in that particular context, i.e. using that particular language. Taking that solution out of its original context (by moving it to another language, say) means that it needs a complete re-evaluation of both the nature of the problem and the solution itself.

I think Stuart misunderstands ‘Design Patterns’ as ‘Code Patterns’ - they are not. They are design solutions where, for convenience, code examples are given. Of course that means that, for the purposes of code reviews, each team needs to formulate its own set of acceptable code templates, adapting each pattern to the language and framework being used.

Daniel Martin (writing on Live Journal) has an interesting article on the right and wrong ways to do HTML expression languages and expression markup for the security conscious. Specifically, the right way to write expressions if you want to avoid Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) exploits.

Although the article is targetted at the writers of HTML templating engines, it is also of use to those of you coding JSP/ASP/PHP pages.

Most HTML templating languages are written incorrectly

A note about this new website: It uses an open source framework called Drupal, which is built using PHP.

I've got a basic site in a matter of a couple of hours, which is a testament to both its power and ease of use. Admittedly, I should know what I'm doing, but I've often found that both those attributes merely mean that I get more irritated and frustrated by the frameworks than empowered by them.

So, a big “Thanks” to the guys are the Drupal Project, wishing them all success for the future