Back in 2009, an answer mentioned the "garbage adapter pattern", in reference to what happens when you try and add tests to a legacy code base that you are not allowed to radically modify. I was unable to find any other mentions of this phrase. Does any have some guesses as to what it was intended to refer to?
There is no such actual coding pattern at all; the person answering just means someone has written code to 'adapt' some 'garbage' code to something usable.