Ward and Kent’s ideas were a strong influence on the Smalltalk community, and the notion of refactoring became an important element in the Smalltalk culture. Another leading figure in the Smalltalk community is Ralph Johnson, a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who is famous as one of the authors of the “Gang of Four” [gof] book on design patterns. One of Ralph’s biggest interests is in developing software frameworks. He explored how refactoring can help develop an efficient and flexible framework.
