I'd argue that the over-engineering hell preceded this book, with every tiny J2EE project using a full 3-tier stack, incl (but not limited to) stateful EJBs, se

I'd argue that the over-engineering hell preceded this book, with every tiny J2EE project using a full 3-tier stack, incl (but not limited to) stateful EJBs, session EJBs, countless JSPs, DAO layers, god only know what else. It was this book that actually revealed, in patterns, the bigger picture, where it was all going wrong, and the alternatives. This book and Spring v1.0 go along together in my mind. BTW (and OT), another underrated Fowler book in a similar vein is "Analysis Patterns", another 10k-ft view of common business problems.