Systems and techniques to facilitate construction of software applications may use patterns that represent generic processes, objects, user interfaces, and content. In general, in one implementation, the technique includes identifying requirements for a desired application and identifying pattern types corresponding to the identified requirements. The pattern types may be selected from process patterns, user interface patterns, and generic object patterns. Patterns that best match the identified requirements may be selected from a set of available patterns, and the selected patterns may be configured according to the identified requirements to produce an application.