[mostlylurks]

People often learn the wrong lessons from literature. Design patterns, for instance, are something you should learn, not as tools that you should eagerly find applications for, but rather as a shared understanding of the kinds of patterns that commonly occur in code, such that you have the right vocabulary to communicate about them with others, and such that you can easily recognize them when they occur in the code. You'll almost inevitably utilize various design patterns extensively in your code even if you've never heard of "design patterns", learning about them simply lets you understand what's happening.