Relating anecdotes from the past, Kent Beck, the father of Extreme Programming and JUnit, reflects back on the impact his ideas have had in the last 20 years, especially with respect to the history of Test Driven Development (TDD), Design Patterns, and Extreme Programming (XP). According to him, good ideas take about that much time to mature and come to fruition.
He regrets how patterns have become a tool in the arsenal of the software developer to solve a programming problem whereas he intended it to be one that would create more space for the user who was to be affected by the software. Reminiscing about the birth of patterns, he draws analogies between architecture in general and software architecture.
Finally he discusses the factors that affect the successful acceptance of an idea.