More About Design Patterns

• Many common patterns have names.  This reduces the learning curve significantly.  Instead of describing the inner workings of a program, you can simply say, "I used the command pattern here and the factory pattern here."  Other programmers who understand patterns will know what you mean.
• Many of the patterns have rules to help you program - you know what to declare private, abstract, etc.
• Design patterns describe the ways objects interact with each other.

• Design patterns gained wide acceptance in 1995, when Gamma, Helm, Johnson and Vlissides published a book, Design Patterns, Elements of Re-Usable Software.  This is commonly known as the Gang of Four (GoF) book.