The problem with GoF (haven't read it cover-to-cover, but have browsed it for inspiration) is that it is more or less an encyclopedia. It lists the discrete pa

The problem with GoF (haven't read it cover-to-cover, but have browsed it for inspiration) is that it is more or less an encyclopedia. It lists the discrete patterns, gives them names, as if they've come down the mountain on stone tablets. I found a book like Head First Design Patterns to be much more bottom-up. It hammers home the idea that discrete design patterns really are just the organic side-effects of applying concepts (meta-patterns?) like "composition over inheritance", "don't repeat yourself", etc., to recurring problems in computer science.