What are Design Patterns?

Design patterns are proven solutions to common problems that occur during software design. They represent best practices, evolved over time and refined by experienced practitioners. Rather than being specific code snippets, they are more like templates or general strategies to solve particular design issues.

Benefits

• Reusability: They are tried and tested solutions that can be applied in many different scenarios.
• Understandability: They provide a common vocabulary for developers.
• Maintainability: Using known patterns can make the software more organized and easier to maintain.
• Scalability: Many design patterns, when applied correctly, can help make systems more scalable.
• Avoid Common Pitfalls: Since they are based on the collective experience of developers, they help avoid common mistakes.

When are they used?

• During system design to decide the high-level architecture of the system.
• During detailed design to decide how components will interact.
• When refactoring code to improve its structure or to solve certain recurrent problems.

Fundamental design patterns