Book review: Design Patterns

This book is a catalog of 23 more or less useful object oriented design patterns in more or less wide spread use. Don't get me wrong, I do like the book's intention of introducing a common vocabulary of solutions to particular engineering problems and it is certainly valuable having these solutions collected and organized in one place. However, I think it is unnecessarily dry and hard to read. The source code examples on the other hand are written in easily understandable C++ with brief mentions of existing implementations or implementation possibilities in different languages. I would have wished for more and more elaborate examples though. The authors often mention the possibility for mixing several patterns to archive their combined strengths, but seldom give code examples demonstrating this - thus leaving the harder problems to the reader. I would have liked less emphasis on the sometimes obscure and outdated 'known uses' section for each pattern - which cites where the pattern has successfully been applied - in exchange for more actual code examples. Sometimes the 'known uses' section reads like an excuse for including that particular pattern, which should be unnecessary, the use should be self evident or the pattern omitted. That said, I still haven't found a use for some of the more esoteric patterns in my everyday designs and application of C++. The book is still a valuable reference, since many patterns (factory, singleton, observer, command) really are in widespread use and you don't want to miss out on their usefulness and seem ignorant in discussions about them ;)