Explaining design patterns

Design patterns are sets of solutions to common design problems that occur over and over in development. They work as a solution template in which an abstract solution for a common problem is described and the user then applies it, adapting it to their problem. In object-oriented programming, the design pattern provides a way to design reusable classes and objects for a specific problem as well as defining the relationship between objects and classes. In addition, design patterns provide a common idiom among programming languages that allows architects and software developers to communicate about a common and recurring problem regardless of the programming language they are using. With this, we are able to identify a problem and its solution by the name of the pattern and thinking about a solution by a model point of view in a high abstraction level of language programming details.

The design patterns theme gained strength in 1994 after the Gang of Four (formed by Rich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson, and John Vlissides) wrote Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object‐Oriented Software. Here, they described 23 design patterns that were later known as GoF design patterns and are still used today.