The GoF design patterns book has two core, very closely related, problems. The first is that it doesn't make enough of an effort to present "design patterns" a

The GoF design patterns book has two core, very closely related, problems. The first is that it doesn't make enough of an effort to present "design patterns" as a conceptual framework. Can you program without using design patterns? No, you cannot. You are always using design patterns whether you know it or not, you're just using ad hoc design patterns without realizing it when you don't think you're using patterns. The book's failure to elucidate commonly used ad hoc patterns as well as common anti-patterns is one of its principle shortcomings. This is something that the refactoring book did much better, by providing examples of how things can be engineered in different ways and why one way might be desirable over another (and how to transition between them). Instead the GoF book largely presents a canonical list of some design patterns, giving people the false impression that these are special and unique versus merely a sampling of ways one might do things. Additionally, the GoF book doesn't make it clear that each design pattern exists to work around specific constraints, and thus doesn't educate the reader when and why the design pattern should be used, and when not. The GoF list of design patterns is very much tightly coupled to the peculiarities of Java at the time the book was written. Many of the design patterns aren't necessary outside of that environment. For that reason, a lot of the design patterns in the book are either obsolete or so seamlessly built in to popular languages that it's not necessary to implement them as described in the book. Many of the more advanced "behavioral" patterns from the book are essentially ways to work around the fact that Java didn't have first class function, when that changes the design patterns that you end up with become very different. A lot of the GoF's list of design patterns just aren't that useful anymore in modern languages, even though many of them are as applicable as ever (modern languages bake iterator support into the language, for example). Additionally, the GoF design patterns break down into two categories: everyday patterns (like iterator, factory, proxy, or adapter) and sometimes patterns (like flyweight). This means that most of the patterns shouldn't be used in every project. Because the design patterns in the original book are somewhat out of date and because there's been so much cargo culting around the GoF patterns there's grown a substantial backlash against patterns. So people tend not to describe new patterns in such a way, even though they should. The concept itself is quite sound, but it requires diligent effort to ensure you're applying it well.