Thank you all for sharing your views, links and suggestions on my question. I see where this is getting, and I have extracted the following points:
1. Many classic design patterns, especially the creational ones (Factory, etc.) aren't really that useful in Python as the built-in features in the language and the new style objects has ways of doing these things far more natural than statically types languages. 2. Don't be religious about the design pattern and applying them too frantically. They may look cool, but there is a great danger for over- engineering and subsequent lower code readability, debuggability, and maintainability. 3. Seek inspiration from well-written sample code. 4. It is good to know them, but be bold sometimes and do something simpler. I think I will buy the Cookbook, not for its design patterns, but more for seing good examples of pythonic code and commonly used Python programming idioms. I already have the "Python in a Nutshell", which I like very much as a no-nonsense presentation of the language and its batteries, and that book would probably be a valuable addition to my limited collected (there are a few condensed pages concerning new- style objects, which I read over and over again). Later, if I still have the appetite for it and feel the need I might dive into some of the other resources mentioned. As a matter of fact I have visited all the links now and gotten some valuable inspirations. -- ~~~~ -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
