What's the revised builder pattern?

Question

What is the difference between the original Builder pattern by GoF and the "revised GoF Builder pattern" by Joshua Bloch?

Answer 1

The GoF pattern focuses on abstracting the steps of construction so that by varying the builder you can get different results while the "revised builder" is targeting the problem of unnecessary complexity added by multiple constructors. So the GoF pattern is more about abstraction and the revised patter is more about simplicity (IMO).

Look at the examples in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Builder_pattern and http://rwhansen.blogspot.com/2007/07/theres-builder-pattern-that-joshua.html and it should be quite clear.