A Guide to Learning Design Patterns

If you’ve been writing code for more than a year, you might have heard of design patterns. I’m always surprised while interviewing veteran developers that have not heard about design patterns. I always make design patterns a topic during interviews because I believe they are a concept that every developer with more than a year experience should at least be aware about.
So when the interviewees response is “I may have heard of them, can you tell me more…”, I become quite surprised. In truth I’m no longer surprised as much anymore because I’ve come to realize that the developer universe is vast and many developers work in these little vacuums with very particular tools to get their job done without ever tracking the on goings of the bigger developer community. Is that acceptable for a developer, is it not? It depends.
It depends if the developer wants to be more marketable or not. It depends if the developer wants to do better at interviews when the time comes for a new job hunt.
The idea that design patterns are necessary is debatable. Some argue that the only reason we need design patterns is due something lacking in the given programming language. Others live by and love them. In my 15 years of experience I can say that the knowledge of design patterns is important for a few reasons.

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