Gang of Four (GoF)

The Gang of Four (GoF) refers to four software engineers—Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson, and John Vlissides—who authored the influential book "Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software" in 1994. They introduced a catalog of common solutions to recurring software design problems, called design patterns. These patterns help developers write flexible, maintainable, and efficient object-oriented code by providing proven templates for organizing complex systems. The GoF's work is foundational in software engineering, offering a shared vocabulary and best practices that improve software quality and development collaboration.