From Erlang Community

[edit] Introduction

A coding idiom is a solution to a commonly occurring programming problem. In a sense all recipes are idioms, but we use the term here for those recipes that apply to many different tasks. In Erlang many patterns, such as object oriented programming, become idioms as we can express these patterns directly in code using functions and macros.

A seminal work in Object Oriented Programming is the so-called "Gang of Four" book, [http://www.amazon.com/Design-Patterns-Object-Oriented-Addison-Wesley-Professional/dp/0201633612/sr=8-1/qid=1157416328/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-2682971-4220810?ie=UTF8