> Additionally, the GoF book doesn't make it clear that each design pattern exists to work around specific constraints, and thus doesn't educate the reader when and why the design pattern should be used, and when not.
Quite to the contrary. I don't have my copy handy and haven't cracked it open in years, but I recall clearly that they presented design patterns as reusable solutions to commonly occurring problems. And for each pattern they outlined, they explained what the problem was that it was intended to solve.
Alas, the part about patterns being solutions to specific problems was lost on many developers, who shoveled in applications of patterns where their corresponding problem didn't exist. And rather than a more modular, understandable, maintainable codebase, an inscrutable mess was often the result.