Jim Coplien

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James O. "Jim" Coplien (also simply known as Cope) is a writer, lecturer, and researcher in the field of Computer Science. He has made key contributions in the areas of software design and organizational development, software debugging, and in empirical research. He held the 2003-2004 Vloeberghs Leerstoel at Vrije Universiteit Brussel and has been a Visiting Professor at University of Manchester. Books he has written include:

Advanced C++ Programming Styles and Idioms
Software Patterns
Multi-Paradigm Design for C++
Organizational Patterns of Agile Software Development (co-authored with Neil Harrison)

He has been a co-editor of these books:

Pattern Languages of Program Design
Pattern Languages of Program Design - II

His early work on C++ idioms was one of the three primary sources of the popular Design Patterns. He also named the curiously recurring template pattern C++ idiom^[1]. His work on Organizational Patterns was an inspiration for both Extreme Programming and for Scrum.

His ongoing work with Liping Zhao includes a monograph entitled "A Generalized Formal Design Theory" which explores the foundations of symmetry and symmetry breaking in design in general, and in patterns in particular.

Cope was a founding Member of Hillside Group with Kent Beck, Grady Booch, Ward Cunningham, Ralph Johnson, Ken Auer and Hal Hildebrand. He has started up several of the conferences in the PLoP conference series and is a longstanding pattern author and PLoP shepherd. His pattern form, the "Coplien Form," is a simplified way to structure a pattern in preparation for writing a more literate version in Alexandrian form.

He was also Program Chair of OOPSLA in 1996, and has been a co-founder and sometimes chair of many software pattern conferences.