The authors of the DesignPatternsBook came to be known as the "Gang of Four." The name of the book ("Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software") is too long for e-mail, so "book by the gang of four" became a shorthand name for it. After all, it isn't the ONLY book on patterns. That got shortened to "GOF book", which is pretty cryptic the first time you hear it.

* ErichGamma
* RichardHelm
* RalphJohnson
* JohnVlissides

"Gang of Four" was originally a reference to certain people of note in Maoist China. Both the band and the authors of the DesignPatternsBook are named after them. See http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/special_report/1999/09/99/china_50/gang.htm
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Sadly, JohnVlissides passed away on November 24 2005 after a long illness. His home page JohnVlissides has many many great stories about his life from his friends and colleagues.
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[GOF:Page''''''No] is an increasingly common acronym for the patterns found in this book. i.e
 [GOF:233] - Command Pattern.
 [GOF:163] - Composite Pattern.

''Cool ! I would suggest using locale-enabled notation to provide this kind of information to non-English readers:''
 ''[GOF{fr}:271] - Pattern Commande.''
 ''[GOF{fr}:189] - Pattern Composite.''
''-- GuillaumeBertrand''

>C'est nickel!< Only ... and, not having seen the book, I hesitate here ... are pages not confounding? Could not pattern number serve better in the form [GOF{gr}:162- Patter Whatever]? -- BenTremblay
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Indeed, this notorious cabal will soon be brought to justice at OOPSLA '99 during a panel entitled the ShowTrialOfTheGangOfFour for crimes against computer science.
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They can also be found at http://st-www.cs.uiuc.edu/users/patterns/DPBook/GOF.html
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For more information, see http://st-www.cs.uiuc.edu/users/pattern/books/#Gamma ''(BrokenLink)'' and http://www.awl.com/cseng/titles/0-201-63361-2

-- BobbyWoolf
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I have begun documenting procedural/relational versions of the GOF patterns. You can view the current draft at: http://www.geocities.com/tablizer/prpats.htm 

Comments welcome.
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"Think of the GOF as helping losers lose less." -- Richard P. Gabriel

A comment on how many of the patterns the "pattern community" describes are merely a way around language constraints in CeePlusPlus et al. (See LanguageSmell.)
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Design Pattern book just celebrated its 10th Anniversary at OOPSLA2004 in Vancouver! Congrats!

''Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional; 1st edition (January 15, 1995) A bit early, no? It's still a week away.''

''Is there ever going to be a 2nd edition?''

For information on the possibility of a second edition, see this interview with John Vlissides here: http://www.devx.com/DevX/Article/26755 
-- RobSanheim

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See also ShowTrialOfTheGangOfFour, ShowTrialVerdict, PatternBacklash, CommentOnCriticismOfTheGangOfFour, DismissalOfSubjectExperts, CrudIsForBeginners
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CategoryPattern