[sunny3]

My experience with the book and its patterns has been that there's an issue and some developers recognize that it could be best resolved with x, y, or z pattern. Then the developers go to extreme length to make sure the implementation adhere to the the 'principles' or 'spirits' of those patterns, so much so that it creates unnecessary complexity (e.g., unneeded layers of abstraction) and friction in other components (to accommodate the 'purity' of that implementation). What's worse, it's very difficult to challenge such implementation in code reviews, since it's originated by GOF, which automatically makes it legitimate. The worst part, though, is that you have to maintain the implementation, any deviation from those patterns is seen as corner-cutting.