It may be the most misunderstood book in CS, but it is definitely one of the least relevant books in CS as well. Rather than have a programmer understanding the

It may be the most misunderstood book in CS, but it is definitely one of the least relevant books in CS as well. Rather than have a programmer understanding the GOF book, I'd much rather have one who understands the Dragon book or CLRS for instance. Or a programmer who can code ML, Haskell or any Lisp fluently. Here is why: suppose we have a programming knowing Java. We teach him ML. Then we teach him the design pattern book. He will have one revelation. ML. On the other hand, suppose we teach him the design pattern book and then teach him ML. He will have two revelations. "Strategy pattern? Why don't you just pass a higher order function... oh ... you can't do that easily ... maybe with an anonymous class .... hmm ... too verbose". Now, apply that time is the most important commodity. You'll be working as hard to learn ML with or without the GOF book under your belt. But with ML under the belt, you'll soar through the GOF-book. Interesting, isn't it?