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(This article contains the author's thought and is not structured as a research paper. Hence, the following is a paragraph taken from the article but not its actual abstract; the article does not have one.)
So you can see the essence of design patterns: good, tested recipes that don't constrain your implementation in unnecessary ways. The patterns do not mandate a particular style, nor include superfluous decorations: the book doesn't tell you, “make this shape of flourishes in the handrails”; instead it tells you, “a house should have its rooms placed such that sunlight enters them according to the time of the day in which they are most used - East for the bedrooms in the morning, West for the living room in the afternoon”.
Yann-Gaël Guéhéneuc, 2014/05/16
This article describes the author's progress from casual observer to expert in design patterns through learning and using real-world architectural patterns. The author start by stating that he used to dismiss refactorings and design patterns as “nothing that you could not discover yourself”. Then, while renovating/expanding his house, he started studying Alexander's patterns and “became tremendously interested in [Alexander's work]”. He realised that the patterns “do not mandate a particular style, nor include superfluous decorations” and they are an “approach [to] design” with “good solutions […] that wouldn't constraint [the] implementation unnecessarily”. Moreover, the patterns “give […] a vocabulary to talk about how things are constructed”.