The third and final article in the series was published on Perl.com after I started writing the above homily.

To my eye, the third article represents an improvement on the earlier two, and the discussions of the Composite and Proxy patterns do manage to convey the essence of the patterns. Unfortunately, the article still suffers from a few flaws; for example, the section labeled "Abstract Factory" only discusses concrete factories, and ignores the specific issues that the "abstract" part of the Abstract Factory pattern addresses.

(I've also written the author of the series, Phil Crow, to give him an opportunity to respond here if he'd like.)