Not a rule to follow — a name for a solution shape that keeps reappearing once enough people have solved the same problem enough times.
Gamma, Helm, Johnson, and Vlissides catalogued 23 recurring object-oriented design solutions in their 1994 book Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software — instantly nicknamed “the Gang of Four” book — giving the field a shared vocabulary (Singleton, Observer, Factory) for design shapes that previously had to be re-explained from scratch every time. That vocabulary is precisely what makes “follow patterns it’s seen before” a meaningful description of what a coding AI does well: pattern-matching against a large, well-labelled corpus of prior solutions is close to the task’s literal definition.
Academic engagement with patterns has continued well past the original book — later work has studied how well patterns hold up when combined with newer paradigms like aspect-oriented programming, treating the original catalogue as a foundation to extend rather than a closed canon.
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Source: Gamma, E., Helm, R., Johnson, R., & Vlissides, J. Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software, 1994 (foundational, practitioner). Riehle, D. “Composite design patterns,” ACM, 1997 (peer-reviewed extension).