To rephrase the quote: Design patterns can be good in the appropriate situations, but Java's heavy use of them has soured people on them altogether.
They're often used ad absurdum in Java, to the extent where even in situations you don't need the complex functionality they support, you're stuck using them (often incorrectly because you don't need them) and they become a burden instead of useful.
In addition to your point, when writing in a language like Java, the overhead of writing code makes doing things the right way (in this case, using a design pattern) harder.
Steve's example of the Strategy pattern is a good example of this. Contrast using this pattern in C (function pointers), in Java (inner anonymous classes conforming to an interface) and in Ruby (a block).
Comments
To rephrase the quote: Design patterns can be good in the appropriate situations, but Java's heavy use of them has soured people on them altogether.
They're often used ad absurdum in Java, to the extent where even in situations you don't need the complex functionality they support, you're stuck using them (often incorrectly because you don't need them) and they become a burden instead of useful.
In addition to your point, when writing in a language like Java, the overhead of writing code makes doing things the right way (in this case, using a design pattern) harder.
Steve's example of the Strategy pattern is a good example of this. Contrast using this pattern in C (function pointers), in Java (inner anonymous classes conforming to an interface) and in Ruby (a block).