> What is an antipattern? An antipattern is a technique that is intended to solve a problem but that often leads to other problems. An antipattern is practiced widely in different ways, but with a thread of commonality. People may come up with an idea that fits an antipattern independently or with help from a colleague, a book, or an article. Many antipatterns of object-oriented software design and project management are documented at the Portland Pattern Repository, as well as in the 1998 book AntiPatterns (BMMM98) by William J. Brown et al.

>The idea of antipatterns emerged soon after that of patterns, but it is unclear who first coined the term. In 1995 Andrew Koenig published a short article in the Journal of Object-Oriented Programming using the term, and in 1996 Michael Akroyd presented a paper at the Object World West Conference that documented harmful software constructs. We will happily give credit to both. Credit for promoting the term, however, must go to the authors of the antipatterns book by Brown et al. (1998). They expanded the scope of antipatterns to include software project management as well, arriving at a three-pronged taxonomy of antipatterns: architectural, design, and management.