That book takes an unfair beating. I think I could still lose an argument defending it, but if you really want to consider the concept fully, you have to take into account:
- Alexander's "The Timeless Way Of Building", from which it borrows the concept of defining a vocabulary of design based on small, proven ideas applied fluidly --- where the GoF misfired was that Alexander's book has hundreds of patterns, and they only have like 15, which made the GoF patterns seem more brittle and simplistic than the concept they were talking about really is. Go read Alexander before laughing at Patterns.
- The extended "Patterns" movement, which can only be an improvement over (gag) OOPSLA --- for a credible application of the idea, see Schmidt's Pattern-Oriented Network Software books. Schmidt (of ACE/TAO infamy) managed to use the Pattern concept to discuss some valuable ideas in concurrency and distributed systems, and I still refer back to those books.
- Alexander's "The Timeless Way Of Building", from which it borrows the concept of defining a vocabulary of design based on small, proven ideas applied fluidly --- where the GoF misfired was that Alexander's book has hundreds of patterns, and they only have like 15, which made the GoF patterns seem more brittle and simplistic than the concept they were talking about really is. Go read Alexander before laughing at Patterns.
- The extended "Patterns" movement, which can only be an improvement over (gag) OOPSLA --- for a credible application of the idea, see Schmidt's Pattern-Oriented Network Software books. Schmidt (of ACE/TAO infamy) managed to use the Pattern concept to discuss some valuable ideas in concurrency and distributed systems, and I still refer back to those books.