[msluyter]

I've heard people say that, but if that's true, why didn't they include many of the (much more commonly used, IME) patterns like Big Ball of Mud, Stovepipe System, Spaghetti Code, etc...? There's lots of nightmarish patterns/techniques that were omitted. I find no plausible way to account for that other than that the patterns are (perhaps implicitly) prescriptive.

[bmm6o]

Those are covered in the anti-pattern book.

[msluyter]

Reinforcing my point. If those are "anti" patterns, they must be bad, right? Hence, patterns as described in GoF are good.

[bethling]

I think there's a line between "These are patterns that we have seen work" and "These are good patterns so use them". Back when I first read the book, I was pretty junior and I remember thinking "oh! I can use this...and this!". And built "wonderfully" over-architected code. Now I'll run into situations where after I starting working on some the solution I have resembles a pattern - and it's nice to be able to use common terms that the other developers will understand when you discuss it.

They're not 'Do this, and you'll have good code', they're just an observation that good code may often use many of these patterns - not because they're forced in there, but because the solution simply maps well to that kind of model.

[jtheory]

The GoF book itself doesn't describe them as good, unequivocally.

It's been a while since I read it, but I remember using the book itself as ammo for arguing when not to use particular patterns. They cover trade-offs, and the situations when the pattern may be appropriate or not.