Agreed. According to the article, if I didn't write a factory class with the knowledge that it was described in the GoF book, then I'm cargo culting, regardless

Agreed. According to the article, if I didn't write a factory class with the knowledge that it was described in the GoF book, then I'm cargo culting, regardless of whether I understand its value as a creational pattern or not. If I also wrote that class using TDD and have never read Kent Beck or Bob C. Martin, then I'm also cargo culting.