Design patterns are patterns which can be used for designs. All patterns can be used for designs; "design pattern" as a phrase merely signals that the pattern was described in a certain book.
Functions are too simple and concrete to be patterns. A function is a mapping from one set to another. Even category theory manages to fully generalize functions several different ways without managing to define something as general as a pattern.
So, you might ask, what are patterns? Patterns are things which repeat somehow. That's it. There might be more to it, but I have yet to find it.
I'm glad that you like Lisp, but it's not the beginning nor the end of programming. For example, the Post correspondence problem is Turing-complete. So are Wang tiles. Where's your functions now?
I believe ktRolster may be refering to "Procedural Abstration". The term is used in SICP [1] (the Wizard Book using scheme, previously freshman programming text at MIT).
Abstration can take many forms. But can often be described as "seperating things that change and/or repeat from those that don't", or something like that.
The last paragraph may be a joke, or based on one of the Principles in the O'Reilly Design Patterns [2] book.
I've read your comment several times, but I'm not sure what you're saying, actually. Certainly functions have been described in several books. No one is said that functions are the only design pattern.
Functions are too simple and concrete to be patterns. A function is a mapping from one set to another. Even category theory manages to fully generalize functions several different ways without managing to define something as general as a pattern.
So, you might ask, what are patterns? Patterns are things which repeat somehow. That's it. There might be more to it, but I have yet to find it.
I'm glad that you like Lisp, but it's not the beginning nor the end of programming. For example, the Post correspondence problem is Turing-complete. So are Wang tiles. Where's your functions now?