> is it possible that not seeing things as patterns allows for a more intuitive grasp? Yes! I think about this often. There is sort of a Zen or Bruce Lee aspec

> is it possible that not seeing things as patterns allows for a more intuitive grasp? Yes! I think about this often. There is sort of a Zen or Bruce Lee aspect where thinking of things strictly in terms of named categories can lead to overly rigid thinking and cause you to avoid better solutions simply because they don't have a name and don't seem as "real". There is a balancing act, though. When we write code on a team, there is a real value to shared understanding of the codebase. Sticking to familiar categories, even at some minor expense of fitness to the task, is probably a net gain if it makes it easier to the entire team to understand what the code is doing and why. It's also important to remember that the primary reason the Gang of Four wrote Design Patterns and called them patterns after Christopher Alexander's A Pattern Language is because they are not rigid copy/paste structures. If they were, we'd just call them data structures or algorithms. The fundamental premise of why we call these patterns is that each manifestation of a pattern will appear slightly different, shaped by the context in which it is applied. That's why you don't often see resuable "pattern implementation libraries". Good literature on patterns stresses this flexibility. Less good literature tends to just say "here's the thing that solves all your problems" and discourages readers from thinking deeply.