But there is an enormous difference between his real idea of "design patterns" and the much more static idea that you see in, for example, the Gang of Four book. The easiest way to see this is to consider that the methods and goals of "A Pattern Language" are centered around making buildings that add to the quality of human life (and the first few patterns deal with the goal of world peace), and would be totally useless to someone building a gulag. Whereas the patterns in the GoF book are just about preventing code duplication, and would find themselves just as useful in a program for violating people's privacy as one designed with a more benign purpose.