Pattern Languages of Programs
annual conference series on software design patterns
Pattern Languages of Programs is a group of annual conferences sponsored by The Hillside Group. The purpose of these conferences is to develop and refine the art of software design patterns. Most of the effort focuses on developing a textual presentation of a pattern such that it becomes easy to understand and apply. This is typically done in a writers' workshop setting.
The flagship conference
The flagship conference is called the Pattern Languages of Programs conference, abbreviated as PLoP. PLoP has been held in the U.S.A. since 1994. Until 2004 it was held annually at Allerton Park in Monticello, Illinois, a property of the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. Since then, its location has alternated between Allerton park and being co-located with OOPSLA, a large computer science conference, with the Agile Conference in 2009, and with PUARL in 2018. The 27th PLoP will be held in Keystone, Colorado.
Notable people who chaired the conference in the past include Ward Cunningham, Richard Gabriel, Ralph Johnson, John Vlissides and Kent Beck.
PLoP (and several other Pattern Languages of Programs conferences) are sponsored by The Hillside Group, a U.S.-based non-profit organization that holds the PLoP trademark and the rights to the conference.
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The date and method of observation matter as much as the stated conclusion, especially where classification or consensus has changed. The source revision retrieved here is dated Nov 24, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q7148368. VIAF identifies the subject as 1717145857087222921706. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1994, 2004, 2009 and 2018.
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This entry incorporates text from “Pattern Languages of Programs” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.