iamwilSoftware engineers inspired by A Pattern Language think of it as a way to break down a medium into its atomic parts, by which we can build back up again.
I was surprised to learn that it's considered post-modern.
But my experience with Design Patterns renders it not so. Many of the design patterns in GoF ended up patches to language weaknesses of C++
Also, the problem with patterns is they don't communicate well backwards from expert to beginners. They're often missing context.
It's not actually solving the problem. You can spend a lot of time doing busy work matching the problems to patterns. That's what I did at the beginning of my career.
The only thing remotely like a pattern in programming are mathematical in nature, like combinators.
It's been a quiet revolution for functional programming. Lots of ideas from pure functional programming have been making their way into mainstream languages without much of a fuss. On one hand, that's a great thing, but on the other, I don't think it gets the credit it deserves.