> Do you truly believe that specific DP book caused that effect? GoF/Design Patterns was published in 1994. Java, the standard-bearer of overapplying Design P

> Do you truly believe that specific DP book caused that effect? GoF/Design Patterns was published in 1994. Java, the standard-bearer of overapplying Design Patterns, was first released in 1995, and it only grew into the AbstractAdapterFactoryImpl cliches after that. Based on that timeline Im not really sure how you can argue that GoF had nothing to do with DP madness, at least as exemplified by Java. Just because GoF was originally meant to be descriptive does not mean that it can't be interpreted as prescriptive, especially by your stock work-a-day software engineer or peter-principle'd software architect. Despite whatever intentions the GoF may have had, by giving these patterns a name, they in a sense codified them, giving people something to point to when justifying otherwise poorly thought out design decisions. > The DP book is extremely dry reading and most programmers have not actually read it. The thing about GoF is that you don't really have to read it to apply it--and not actually reading it only increases the odds of mis-applying patterns if youve encountered them elsewhere.