[shagie]

One certainly doesn't become a senior overnight. However, the GoF book is not a book for fundamentals for a self taught developer.

I will also point out that the quote that I have and that you've quoted again is from Erich Gamma... of Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software by by Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson, and John Vlissides.

The GoF book on design patterns is a book for how to solve a common set of problems using these common solutions. What it is not is a "use these solutions in every well designed program".

My read on the OP's question is one of "how to become a junior programmer" - they can read code but don't write it well. The GoF is not the next book on that path. It is a book to read after you've been designing and understand the pains of writing and designing larger pieces of software... but if you're still working on "write something that solves a problem in 200 lines" the GoF will not provide any solutions for those problems. ... And if you do try to apply the GoF to the 200 line long problems you'll have contrived solutions that are a synthetic design that, in the words of Erich Gamma "speculative designs that have flexibility that no one needs. These days software is too complex."