I don't have the book handy, but I seem to remember somewhere early on they say something to the effect of "We find ourselves writing similar code in response t

I don't have the book handy, but I seem to remember somewhere early on they say something to the effect of "We find ourselves writing similar code in response to similar situations, so we've collected those strategies and put them in this book." I don't remember anything that sounded like "This is how you OO." As others have pointed out, the book is nice because it gave rise to a common language for describing patterns, and it's much easier to understand code someone else wrote if you can divine intentions from variable and class names.