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# Engineering, tango — and “four” as a pattern
- URL: https://zahradnik.io/engineering-tango-and-four-as-a-pattern/
- Published: 2026-04-16T09:50:53.000Z
- Updated: 2026-04-16T09:50:53.000Z
- Author: Vladimír Záhradník
- Tags: Field notes, Tango, Software engineering

If you’ve been around software long enough, you’ve probably seen design patterns.  
Reusable structures that outlive any single language.

They trace back to a book — *Design Patterns* — and four authors known as the **Gang of Four**:

– Erich Gamma  
– Richard Helm  
– Ralph Johnson  
– John Vlissides

Recently, going deeper into tango music, I noticed something similar.

There’s also a “Big Four”:

– Troilo  
– Pugliese  
– D’Arienzo  
– Di Sarli

Different domain — same structure.

You can explore dozens of orchestras, just like dozens of patterns.  
But these four form the foundation. Every school teaches them. Everything else builds on top.

I started to see them as **clusters** — reference points you can map everything else against.

If you want to explore a new domain, this might be a shortcut:

→ find its “four”  
→ compare them  
→ learn the differences

That’s how I’m learning musicality now — as an IT guy.