Big Ball of Mud

Brian Foote and Joseph Yoder introduced the term in a 1997 paper at the Fourth Pattern Languages of Programs conference in Monticello, Illinois. Researchers at Washington University, they set out to name the most common real-world architecture — one ignored in engineering literature. Their definition was deliberately blunt: "a haphazardly structured, sprawling, sloppy, duct-tape-and-baling-wire, spaghetti-code jungle." Republished in Pattern Languages of Program Design 4 in 2000, the paper gave Big Ball of Mud its canonical place in software discourse.