Anti-patterns

An anti-pattern is a literary form that describes a commonly occurring solution to a problem that generates decidedly negative consequences [1].

If a pattern represents a “best practice”, then an anti-pattern represents a “lesson learned.” Initially proposed by Andrew Koenig in the November 1995 C++ Report, there are two notions of "anti-patterns [2].”

1. Those that describe a bad solution to a problem which resulted in a bad situation.
2. Those that describe how to get out of a bad situation and how to proceed from there to a good solution.

People think that the presence of patterns are really important in successful development of a system which is right but in the meanwhile the presence of anti-patterns make that system robust which is not being accepted and considered at a wider scale.

Writers Brown Malveau, McCormick and Mowbray wrote a book called Anti-Patterns in which they spoke about refactoring software, architectures, and projects in crisis. It is their aim to go one step beyond to recommend a course of action for alteration, recuperation, and prevention [2].

They show us how to turn lemons into lemonade and how to avoid subsequent lemons, leading us away from the misfits of anti-patterns, and back towards the patterns that resolve them [2].

References:
[1] http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/webservices/library/j-bitterjava/index.html
[2] http://www.cmcrossroads.com/bradapp/docs/patterns-intro.html#KindsOfPatterns