Ask HN: Is Gang of Four still the standard on design patterns?
If I wanted to pick up some books on design patterns which would be considered good purchases in 2025? Is the book by the Gang of Four still relevant? If not what else should we look at?
If I wanted to pick up some books on design patterns which would be considered good purchases in 2025? Is the book by the Gang of Four still relevant? If not what else should we look at?
You should have no trouble finding it used for single-digit dollars. If you decide to get it, read the first and last chapters. Like, actually read them. They are the chapters that don’t have any design patterns in them, so pretty much nobody reads them. But you should. Whether or not you study any of the design patterns in the book is up to you. They don’t really apply to a lot of things people are doing these days.
They are still useful because they identify fundamental patterns in how code gets organized and different concepts get connected. GoF design patterns give you a linguistic description of common structural organizations of data/logic flows.