A commenter on my Problem with Patterns post had an interesting response:

“It think that what you are trying to do, identify patterns that are more interesting because they are not so much a work-around for missing language features is an interesting approach—and greatly more sophisticated that the average “critique” of patterns. And yet, would Flyweight seem so interesting in a language with symbols and automatic memoisation?”

I’ll go ahead and plug their blog as thanks for being so insightful.

This got me thinking about what I was really getting at.  The whole thing came to mind after having a “I hate design patterns” conversation with someone, but really we were trying to say “I hate having to use a design pattern to do something that should be easy.”  Usually this happens when you are aware of a different programming language in which doing that thing would be easy.  Or maybe you’re just very imaginative.

So what I decided to get out of the whole discussion (both with commenters and with other people I’ve spoken with lately) is that some programming languages are Pattern Prone. A Pattern Prone language is a language where certain restrictions or missing features cause you to repeat complex processes to solve simple problems.  This is a fuzzy measurement: you can’t really make a definitive list of what languages are Pattern Prone.  But it will give you a better way of expressing certain complaints without posting on your blog that there is a Problem with Patterns.