The flip-side of Patterns, AntiPatterns provide developers with formal descriptions of common development gaffes that can derail a project along with practical guidelines on how to avoid them.

Also, in this approach the assumption is made that the programmer has failed to appreciate the need for the pattern in the first instance, and has used some inadequate design structure to deal with the situation. The philosophy behind this approach is that the code may have been developed by a programmer who was not aware of patterns. It describes the various techniques to refactor the code.