PatternShare Is Gone

I used to keep a link to PatternShare community website on the sidebar of this blog. It turns out, the site (which was maintained by PnP team) is no longer active. The reason I am blogging about this is because we spent a full hour on PnP Summit today discussing the fate of PatternShare. The key question was where PnP should be spending its efforts: on embedding relevant patterns in its tools (application blocks, factories, guidances) or educating people by writing books and creating new version of PatternShare? There were plenty of arguments on both sides. I think the consensus opinion is that education is important, but even if PnP provides the books, there is no guarantee that people will educate themselves. Programmers are more likely to use free tools. But does good tool make bad coders smarter? Or does it make them more dangerous?

I still think design patterns should be taught in colleges...