Here we have someone who decided to substitute several weeks of study of statistics with a 48 hour cram session powered by caffene pills and subsequently fail to properly analyze a problem on a test later reflect that he could have solved it properly had he simply taken a more careful and thoughtful approach go on to tell us that Design Patterns are bad because people like him will immediately try to use them in solutions before understanding the problem.

I don't think the design patterns book set the field back. Basically, there will always be people that want to use their memorization skills (learning the design patterns) to do something creative (programming). If there weren't design patterns, something else would have filled that void. (I don't understand why people that aren't good at programming want to program, though. I wish people would realize, "I have no clue" and then change careers. They're making the creative folks look incompetent by association. </offtopic> :)

Design patterns are good at what they were meant to solve: give a common name to patterns that appear commonly in software development so that qualified individuals can have intelligent conversations about software design.

There are two extremes to design patterns however. On one end you have idiots that insist on using design patterns everywhere. These people know they can't program and use a design pattern soup in order to hide their incompetence.

On the other end you have people that claim design patterns are evil and they'd rather reinvent the flat tire over and over again instead of trying to learn from the experience of others. These people think they're smarter than everyone else.