Design Patterns in Programming Explained

As a beginner in computer programming, you must have heard about design patterns but many of you may be wonderning what are they and why are they used? Design patterns are reusable solutions for coding problems that occur commonly in software development. Design Patterns help to improve the coding process significantly and help to accelerate the development process. As such, it's critical for all software developers to understand the various design patterns that can be used to solve common programming challenges.

What is a Design Pattern?

A design pattern is a repeatable structure or standard way of solving a problem. It's a best practice for developers when it comes to coding. They're commonly found in software engineering and enable software developers to be more efficient and create better code. Design Patterns helps to define the structure, outline and scope of a particular software design. They provide a way to write code that can be used to solve common problems. Design patterns are divided into three major categories:

• Creational Patterns
• Structural Patterns
• Behavioral Patterns

Let us look at some of the common design patterns.

Creational Patterns

Creational patterns are useful when creating objects and managing the memory with certain language structures. They are very useful for designing classes for new objects. The following are some of the creational patterns used in software programming:

• Singleton
• Factory Method
• Abstract Factory
• Builder Pattern

Structural Patterns

Structural patterns provide a way to design the structure of the code while solving common problems. Structural patterns provide simple and easy ways to organize and lay out the software code. Some of the popular structrural patterns are:

• Adapter Pattern
• Bridge Pattern
• Composite Pattern
• Decorator Pattern

Behavioral Patterns

Behavioral patterns define the communication between software elements. These patterns deal with the communication between different classes and object in the application. The following are some of the most popular behavioural patterns:

• Observer Pattern
• Command Pattern
• Chain of Reponsibility Pattern
• State Pattern

Conclusion

In this article we discussed about design patterns and its three types. To get a better understanding, you can enroll for an online course or watch video tutorials on the internet. Understanding the various design patterns will enable you to better design and code software applications.