I think it's different in this case. It was a product of its time, dealing with languages designed and used in its time. The concept of defining and applying design patterns based on Christopher Alexander's work was solid. The problem has always been that people didn't understand that these were examples for a specific world, and that other worlds would and should either have different patterns or those patterns would look different.
I think GoF is all right, when viewed as a book of gadgets. That is, if you have this problem, then consider this mechanism as a fix.
The problem is, people treat it like a "here's how to do OO design" book. It is not suited to that, and especially not suited to being the one and only OO design book that people read.
I guess this is my actual problem with it, or at least the way that it's been received. It implicitly posits that programming is a collection of gadgets. A gadget is a fine thing, when you have decided _what_ you want to do and are looking for a way to do it.
But a gadget-centric process, whether is patterns or microservices, constrains the design space to assemblies. and that a really small and clunky part of the space.
Actually, I think it's the other way around. Trashing the GoF is a sign of a blind trend follower. Someone who lauds them are bucking the trend and might have interesting things to say about it.
It's kind of the "barber pole" of fashion. Independent of the merits of the thing at hand (it may be GoF, a language, a library, Uncle Bob; even outside programming like research methods; outside science like word use and euphemisms etc), the in-crowd moves faster and arguing against a perceived popular thing can make you (feel/appear like) a trendsetter, a visionary.
It goes in cycles, once the contrarian position becomes established, reverting to the original becomes the new cool. The "it's good actually", or that meme where the dumb guy thinks simple thing X, the mediocre average guy thinks a loooong, elaborate sophisticated thing Y, and the wise guru thinks simple thing X again.
GoF was long enough ago that if you're advocating for it, it seems dated, it seems you're either a novice or someone who came of age at that time and has not read anything new since. It's like someone suddenly discovering Kahneman and cognitive biases and argumentation fallacies and proselytizing on them. Regardless of the merits, culture has moved on, has digested it, built in the good parts, spat out the bad, and the zeitgeist is elsewhere.
