Anti patterns

While design patterns are often seen as good design solutions to a common problem, anti patterns are the opposite: bad solutions to a common problem.

Anti patterns usually describe designs that look like a good idea at first but have negative effects when used. Because they look like an attractive solution, developers may be easily tempted to use them. To avoid this, they have been documented just like "positive" design patterns (in [1] for example).

The documentation of an anti pattern will often tell you why the bad solution looks good, what negative effects it causes if it's used and what positive pattern should be applied to solve the problem instead.

There are lots of different anti patterns. For a long list of common ones, see [2].

References

1. ^William Brown, Raphael Malveau, Hays McCormick, and Thomas Mowbray. Anti Patterns: refactoring software, architectures, and projects in crisis. John Wiley and Sons, 1998.
2. ^http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?AntiPatternsCatalog