I never was quite into patterns but what does this mean?

There’s a discussion on the erlang-questions list about “design patterns” and what those might be for erlang. In the midst of this thread the following statement popped up…

“The OTP is a collection of GoF-style patterns for Erlang.” And I had a reaction to the current state of patterns, generally. I think this list, as well as the software community as a whole, has lost sight of the original intent of the “patterns movement”.

The original intent of a “pattern” is the format of the information, more than the information per se.

The format should be written in (one of several) pattern styles. The overall presentation of some set of patterns should form a “patterns language”.