[asolove]

Folks who enjoy this should consider reading Christopher Alexander's "The Nature of Order", which has some philosophy and metaphysics, but also a lot of analysis of concrete examples, of how complex structures come to be. It also attempts to analyze the process-oriented reasons behind guidelines like this.

[sesm]

I would also recommend 'Patterns of Software' by Richard Gabriel. In one of the chapters he discusses how Christopher Alexander's work can be applied to software and argues that GoF interpretation of 'pattern language' totally misses the point.

[asolove]

100%. If you read "A Pattern Language" and arrive at GoF, I'm not really sure how you got there.