If you're talking about GoF design patterns, then I think they are a waste of time. They are low-level and extremely class-oriented. This is exactly the area wh

If you're talking about GoF design patterns, then I think they are a waste of time. They are low-level and extremely class-oriented. This is exactly the area where FP wins over Java-like languages hands-down. And I'm saying this as primarily Java/C# developer. Hinton has a great presentation about it: http://www.norvig.com/design-patterns/ http://www.norvig.com/design-patterns/ What I would recommend is learning about the Smalltalk approach (not necessarily the language, but how Smalltalk environments are designed and what you can do in them). Another thing I recommend looking into is Agent-Oriented programming. Agents seem to be much closer to Kay's original vision than anything we call "object" today. Here is a really cool read: https://alumni.media.mit.edu/~mt/diss/prog-w-agents.pdf https://alumni.media.mit.edu/~mt/diss/prog-w-agents.pdf It might sounds academic, but there are tons of great design ideas there. I used some of them in HR applications, which is as "boring" and practical as programming gets.