I think a lot of people have a dislike for OO and for some reason by extension design patterns, which in my mind are more or less the same thing as best practic

I think a lot of people have a dislike for OO and for some reason by extension design patterns, which in my mind are more or less the same thing as best practices. Patterns are handy as they provide you with a nice template to solve a common problem, and to provide structure to your designs. As the interview states, eventually everything becomes a big hairy mud ball.